Yet again, thank goodness for the inter-web thingee.

Otherwise, we might be stuck with having to only read opinion pieces passed off as straight news -

[…] federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush’s portrayal of a world growing safer

In the bleak report

Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration’s glass-half-full declarations

Virtually all assessments of the current situation were bad news. The report’s few positive notes were couched in conditional terms, depending on successful completion of difficult tasks ahead for the U.S. and its allies.

National intelligence estimates are compilations of the best thinking of U.S. intelligence agencies, meant to provide the broadest guidance to government policy-makers.

But they can be wrong. A 2002 assessment, for example, concluded that Iraq had continued its development of weapons of mass destruction, held arsenals of chemical and biological weapons and “probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.” None of those assertions turned out to be true.

Like I said, thank goodness for the inter-web thingee - otherwise, we’d be stuck with this portrayal, by a left-leaning shill fresh off being talked to like a 5 year old due to her obtuse grasp of the war on terror by a man with a unique first person perspective. But with these internets at our disposal, we can go and read the whole thing for ourselves - and see that what’s being talked about is a description of a work in progress for a very difficult task - that pretty well points out that the preferred course of (non) action by some of those most fervently “stirring the heated political debate” - in other words, cut, run and abandon the progress made to date - that the Islamofascists most certainly WILL explode (no pun intended) in terms of being a threat to the West.

Which, because it isn’t packaged in a convenient cut and paste one liner in the NIE, and doesn’t fit the ’story line’ being pushed by the Ayatollah Associated (with Terrorists) Press operatives …well, hell, let’s see what the NIE itself has to say on the subject

The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.

• • We judge that groups of all stripes will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, propagandize, recruit, train, and obtain logistical and financial support.

Remember kids - this is a description of the terrorists, not the AP or Saint Cindy, or Mullah Moore, or even the DNC.

No, really.

::Update:: Contrast and compare with this Al-Reuters (whose journos were not talked to like obtuse 5 year olds) article. As a bonus - only fully vetted stock photos with the article.