US Intelligence? What would they know.

The charmingly named Sarah Smiles reports in today's Age that "the Prime Minister has dismissed parts of a US intelligence report that link the Iraq war with spreading global terrorism".

I love this.

Apparently John Howard knows better than 16 combined US intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Estimate report is generated by the most highly organised, heavily funded intelligence community that has ever existed. But John Howard doesn't trust them. Why?

"Intelligence agencies have different views at different times," he told ABC radio.

"Some of the intelligence agencies that were involved in this assessment were telling us … that Iraq in 2003 had weapons of mass destruction."

That's right, John Howard knows better than these intelligence agencies, because some of them provided the information that he chose to believe sufficiently to send our Defence Forces off to war in Iraq.

So if these agencies provide you with information that will allow you to take politically expedient steps to war, then they must be listened to. They are, after all, the most technologically advanced, far-reaching intelligence apparatus in the world.

But if they suggest that your actions may in fact be exacerbating the situation then they are perennially incompetent flip-floppers who are to blame for the fact that the war exists in the first place.

Fortunately we have brave little Johnnie Howard who can step in and talk some sense. It's so enchantingly clever the way he can be in the right on both sides of an argument.

I've mentioned before that the right have been much craftier with their use of language than the left. But I've got to admit, the recent conservative trend towards being right on both sides of an argument is beginning to seem ridiculous.

Mr Lefty puts this best:

"Fundamentally, the world is a safer place, thanks to the leadership of George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, and it is also much more dangerous than it was five years ago, underlining how much we need more of their leadership."

Thank God he's never going to be out of office...