NIE Report out - Bush doubts his own intelligence?

I read the article below with interest.With Bush's dismissal of the NIE and disbelief in the Democrats' talk on the NIE, all I could determine is that Bush doubts his own intelligence! (Greetings...)

Bush Attacks Democrats Over Iraq and Terror
By JIM RUTENBERG Published: September 29, 2006, NY Times

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Sept. 28 — President Bush took on the Democrats on Thursday with some of his most pointed language yet this campaign year, telegraphing the start of the last, intensive phase of the election season for the White House

Speaking to a crowd of more than 2,000 supporters in this Bush-friendly Southern city, the president took Democrats to task for their criticism of the Iraq war, for their votes this week against legislation creating military tribunals to try terrorism suspects and for what he called misleading descriptions of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism.

The National Intelligence Estimate, completed in April and reflecting a consensus of 16 American intelligence agencies, concluded among other things that the Iraq war had become a “cause célèbre” for Islamic extremists. “The Democrats are using the N.I.E. to mislead the American people and justify their policy of withdrawal from Iraq,” the president said.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement sent by e-mail to reporters, “Rather than heed the warnings in the N.I.E., President Bush politicized this discussion, and the Republican Congress has stood on the sidelines.”

In his criticism, Mr. Bush also singled out members of the Democratic leadership. Referring to “a senior Democrat in Congress” without mentioning her by name, he recalled a recent comment in which Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said: “The president says that fighting them there makes it less likely we’ll have to fight them here. The opposite is true.”
The president pointed to Ms. Harman’s remark as an example of how “some in Washington, some decent people, patriotic people,” think that “we should not be on the offensive in this war on terror. History,” he said, “tells us that logic is false.”

Through a spokesman, Ms. Harman said Thursday evening, “If the president reads his own intelligence, he will see that his failed strategy in Iraq is making the terrorist threat more dangerous.”

On Quoting bin Laden

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html For entire article
Wednesday, September 6, 2006; 12:46 PM

The spectacle of the president of the United States extensively quoting Osama bin Laden to bolster his controversial policies during political season deserves notice, and reflection.

By all rights, President Bush ought to be embarrassed that the al Qaeda leader who masterminded the September 11 terrorist attacks remains at large almost five years later.

But Bush yesterday let bin Laden share his bulliest of pulpits, giving the mass murderer precisely the attention he craves and endorsing his extreme view that a Third World War is under way.

Here's the text of Bush's speech.

Mentioning bin Laden so much couldn't help but remind listeners of Bush's failure to capture or kill him. But the risk was easily offset by the fact that bin Laden remains the most effective bogeyman out there, and job one for the White House in the run-up to a potentially crippling mid-term election is to scare the hell out of people.