Free the Intelligence!
How's that for a bumper sticker? Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall is leading a campaign to phone your members of Congress, calling on them to release the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was leaked to the NYT and WP over the weekend. The NIE apparently finds that the War in Iraq has made us much less safe against terrorism, undermining the repeated claims of the Bush administration to the contrary.
The NIE must be released before the midterm elections so that voters can take its analysis into account. As James Madison wrote in a 1792 essay titled, "Who Are the Best Keepers of the People's Liberties?": "mysteries belong to religion, not to government." I'd add that if anyone wants to see the venerable Madison acting the rabble-rouser, an angry left-wing populist with what can only be described as a proto-Marxist streak, demanding, for example, laws to prevent economic inequality and the accumulation of wealth by those who would subvert the nation's republican constitution through the excessive powers of the executive branch, the corruption of Congress, and its overly close relation to the "moneyed" interest (K Street Project, anyone?), take a look at some of his essays for the Jeffersonian National Gazette from 1791-3. Blistering stuff.
Might I suggest the highlighted Madisonian tidbit above to #3 as a pithy slogan for the masthead of Freedom from Blog?
posted by tenaciousmcd @ 12:30 PM
2 Comments:
I'm for releasing the 2006 NIE. Of course one of the pernicious things that the Bush regime has now perpetrated is a total lack of faith in the NIE after they pressured the contents of the 2002 estimate, which differed widely from all previous estimates and was the basis of the invasion of Iraq. Should the NIE issue have some traction this fall, you can bet some on the right will point to the 2002 NIE as a failure and a reason we can't trust the 2006.
I vote for Madison's words to replace The Joe's. Maybe it would have more authority in Latin: mysteria non rebus publicis sed religiosis pertinent.
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