Iraq NIE Delivered To White House

What's the matter with this picture?

A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document. ...

The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals.

Say what? "Al Qaeda" activities in Iraq have never been the "primary source of conflict" or "the most immediate threat to U.S. goals." Nobody with any credibility has asserted this to be the case.

Until now.

The only way a statement of this type can be made is if we are lumping all Sunni insurgents -- including secular former Baathist regime elements -- under the rubric "Al Qaeda."

Or more likely, somebody is bullshitting the WaPo's not-usually credulous Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus as to the key judgments of the NIE.


UPDATE: Having read the key judgments myself now, it is clear that DeYoung and Pincus bought a load of shit on the Al Qaeda claim from their source(s).