Snipped from AmericaBlog.com.

If you’re like me and you see an intelligence report that represents the consensus view of all 16 agencies that make up the American intelligence community, you have a tendency to pay attention. While Bush steadfastly and stubbornly pushes the Iraq War as the central front on the fight against terrorism, he refuses to accept his own intelligence agencies’ report that the real fight against the “real” al Qaeda (yeah, the ones who did attack us on 9/11) is a complete failure. And what even amazes me more is that the press is not calling him on this. What has happened to the backbone of our formerly stalwart journalists whose job it is to ferret out the truth and champion accountability as they have done so many times in the past? Where are our champions today?

The article links to a The New York Times piece that reports the truth on the ground in Afghanistan but it seems to pale at the continuous barrage of Bush’s war rhetoric of “fighting al Qaeda in Iraq”. Even Frances Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House was having difficulty defending Iraq as the central front on terrorism. She calmly reported that they had no alternative strategies for dealing with the al Qaeda threat in Pakistan and have been distracted by the war in Iraq. (Uh, you think?) And, furthermore, she stated that al Qaeda was rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since 9/11.

Here is part of what the article reveals about the intelligence report.

President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

The report nevertheless left the White House fending off accusations that it had been distracted by the war in Iraq and that the deals it had made with President Musharraf had resulted in lost time and lost ground.

While the assessment described the Qaeda branch in Iraq as the “most visible and capable affiliate” of the terror organization, intelligence officials noted that the operatives in Iraq remained focused on attacking targets inside that country’s borders, not those on American or European soil.

Read the article(s) and/or view the video in The New York Times piece, and tell me what has happened to a nation who ignores its own intelligence in favor of a delusional president. Click the image below for the full article.