Questions about Bush's NIE leak

[Bluesplayer]

1. If Bush "declassified" the NIE document, as he has admitted, can we now read the whole thing?

2. If he only declassified those parts of the NIE that supported what he had been saying, and continued to suppress other portions that were in opposition, did he really "declassify" it?

3. Regarding the procedure for declassification, are there other documents that have been only partly declassified? Do redactions count?

4. If he was serious about wanting us to know the information contained in the NIE, why was it necessary to leak it at all? Couldn't the WH have simply released a statement, explaining that it was to "set the record straight"? Why all the super secret squirrel stuff?

5. Isn't this proof that he manipulated us into war? Isn't that impeachable?

6. Why don't the Dems in Congress formally/publicly ask for an investigation? Not that they'll get one, but why not get it on the record?

[rzemanfl]

1. A former government lawyer puts it this way:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

Elizabeth De la Vega, a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=76008 (scroll down)

[Bluesplayer]

2. Alberto Gonzales would simply answer, "Yes." nt

[rzemanfl]

3. That's what yes men do. n/t