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03/08/2004: "War on Terror Intelligence Analysis"

From Time Magazine via Steven Den Beste and Instapundit:

TIME: You were misled?
KERRY: Certainly by somebody. The intelligence clearly was wrong, fundamentally flawed. Look, the British were able to do a two-month analysis of what happened to their intelligence. This Administration wants to put it off to 2005. It's a national-security issue to know what happened to our intelligence. We ought to know now.

So let's compare and contrast different approaches to Washington D.C. intelligence analysis. The first is from a leaked Secretary Donald Rumsfeld memo:

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has admitted that Washington has no way of knowing whether it is winning or losing its "war on terror" and predicts "a long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a leaked document published [October 22, 2003].
The memorandum was sent to his civilian deputies and top military officers, calling for fresh thinking in US counter-terrorist strategy.

Compare this to the strategy outlined in a leaked memo penned by Senator Jay Rockefeller:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.
...
2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.
...
3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.

For the record, the Rockefeller memo concerned the intelligence analysis to which Senator Kerry refers. The Rockefeller memo targets high minded Republicans when it talks of pulling the trigger. The war Rumsfeld wages is against foreign terrorists.

It seems to me John Kerry is more interested in job security for him and his cadre rather than national security for the rest of us.