Why the NIE?

What a fine time to have been away from the Internet!

Hopefully I'll have more in a forthcoming article about all this, but if you're wondering why this NIE summary came out now, after a year or two of hearing exactly the opposite over and over again, I think it's worth considering the possibility that the mucky mucks at ODNI knew or believed that the entire report (or at least the details thereof) would be leaked if they didn't release the key judgments--that if they hadn't done "the sensible thing" there would have been an even larger spectacle to contain.

Why would people in the intelligence community defect from the administration like this? Well, there's no love lost in that relationship to begin with, so it could be any number of reasons, and maybe this is all as simple as a few renegades growing tired of watching their hard work misconstrued and lied about month after month for demented purposes. Or maybe somebody learned that Iran was becoming impatient as the "reasonable" partner in this relationship...

Food for thought.