...And Just A Brief Note:

...Because I just love the cherry-picking MSM.



They've made much just recently of the NIE - National Intelligence Estimate - saying that it claims that the U. S. presence in Iraq is causing a upswing in terrorism, or "jihadism."



But they missed the sentence that makes the whole Iraq war valid.



Convenient, that.



Anyway, although the so-far declassified segment of the document - not the whole thing yet, but it's closer - can be found here, I will save you some time.



The big, important paragraph, the one the media's been loving to repeat, is this:



"The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U. S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."



That sounds dire, right? Except for one tiny problem. Look at page two yourself. That's not the whole paragraph. It concludes:



"Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight."



In other words, if we persist in Iraq, despite the fact that they might be pissed we're there, they'll also see it as a losing fight and go home.



Funny how that kind of thing seems to get left out when it's MSNBC and the New York Times doing the reporting, ain't it?