When The Generals Talk  

The SMH reports that the US military is getting revenge on the Bush administration for 8 years of incompetence and dumping them with 2 unwinnable wars that have enriched Republican cronies while damaging huge numbers of troops (not to mention the million dead Iraqis) and contributed heavily to the unfolding bankruptcy of the US - Wars without end.

It is all in the language and the timing of the leaks. The White House has been incredibly slow to grasp the reality of the unremitting chaos in Afghanistan. But with its most senior intelligence analysts now warning of a "worsening downward spiral", resource-strapped military chiefs in Washington baulk at the only available remedy for a deepening crisis in Kabul - large troop cuts in Iraq.

The next draft of America's security bible, the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate - or the NIE, as Washington insiders know it - is not due to be handed to George Bush until after the November 4 presidential election.

But on the same day this week, the NIE's damning central finding was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Seven years after the easily won fall of Kabul, all 16 US intelligence agencies judge the American-sponsored government of Hamid Karzai to be no match for the Taliban and the drug barons, for corruption and cronyism.

But lest there be a renewed Washington push for troops to be lifted out of Baghdad to Kabul, the NIE finding on Iraq was leaked to a correspondent with the McClatchy newspaper chain - unresolved ethnic and sectarian tension in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the security and political gains of the last 12 months.

These orchestrated leaks in the middle of the US election campaign suggest that the generals may have decided its pay-back time for their commander-in-chief.