Unmitigated gall

"Unmitigated gall" is a cliched phrase. You'll rarely hear anyone speak of gall without describing it as unmitigated, and you'll rarely hear the word unmitigated used to describe anything other than gall.

Still, it's a useful phrase, even sometimes an unavoidable one. Such as this morning.

You may have read over the weekend about the National Intelligence Estimate on the effect of the war in Iraq. The NIE, as one analyst said to The Washington Post "is stating the obvious" in noting that fiasco in Iraq has encouraged, strengthened and intensified the problem of global terrorism. (The intelligence analyst who said this did so anonymously because stating the obvious is frowned on by the Bush administration.) Here's the Post's basic summary of that NIE:

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

Well, yeah. That much has long been known by, well, everybody. That much is hardly worth remarking on.

But today the White House and Director of National Intelligence John "Death Squad" Negroponte have begun pushing back and playing down the conclusions of that NIE: "Negroponte: Reports Distort Terror Study":

Negroponte released a statement in which he said the overall conclusions of the the National Intelligence Estimate on Trends in Global Terrorism were distorted by reports that focused on a few opinions:

"A National Intelligence Estimate is a comprehensive assessment comprised of a series of judgments which are based on the best intelligence our government develops," Negroponte said. "Characterizing only a small handful of those judgments distorts the broad strategic framework the NIE is assessing — in this case, trends in global terrorism. … The conclusions of the Intelligence Community are designed to be comprehensive and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."

Let's think back to how it was that the American people were snookered into thinking that a war in Iraq might be a good idea. This happened because the best intelligence was — repeatedly and deliberately — distorted by official statements that focused on a few opinions and characterized only a small handful of judgments. That's how the country was misled into this fiasco, this bad idea poorly executed which has served only to strengthen terrorism and to further endanger both the people of America and the people of Iraq.

And now the very same people who spent years cherry-picking intelligence, ignoring all caveats, doubts and even refutations of their favored minority opinions, these very same people are calling for greater nuance, context and qualification in reading the NIE that explains, in 30 blunt pages, how utterly FUBAR their pet project has turned out to be.

That takes gall.

You would expect, if these people were even slightly capable of shame or reflection, or even slightly patriotic, that their overweening gall would be mitigated somewhat by the knowledge that they have seriously wounded the very country they are sworn to serve. But this does not seem to be the case. Their brazen, reflexive self-justification isn't hampered by any such mitigating factors.

Unmitigated gall. Still a cliche, but inescapably apt nonetheless.