LOST

By Ron Beasley

ABC reports that the latest NIE on Afghanistan concludes that things in Afghanistan are "grim".

US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as "grim", but there are "no plans to declassify" any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process.

Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community's 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final "coordination meeting" of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.

According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.

Now since the news is bad it won't be declassified.

Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, has made it his policy that such key judgments "should not be declassified", although several have recently, including a report on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Of course if it was good news is would have been leaked already but it's not.

"We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida," Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would "call it quits."

"The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don't have that money," Jones said.

So Afghanistan is lost unless we send troops we don't have - that is Afghanistan is lost.