[link|http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003156122|http://www.editorand...ent_id=1003156122]

A pitched battle over an intelligence assessment, covered first by The New York Times and then The Washington Post, broke out across the media today. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig went so far as blame the whole fuss -- over the negative view of the war in Iraq and the war on terror -- on liberal journalists. CNN aired an interview with President Bush in which he declared that one day the Iraq war will look like "just a comma."

The National Intelligence Estimate declared that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, worsening the overall terror threat, cutting at the heart of the White House defense of its strategy. The assessment \ufffdshould put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush\ufffds phony argument about the Iraq war,\ufffd Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) said in a statement.

Everybody wants to get their posistion on the NIE in. The pro-war people have mostly jumped on the "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" line as the best response to the NIE. The anti-war ones are split, depending on how anti-war they are and their original posistion on the war.

Jay