Why Haven't We Been Attacked?

"After weeks of negotiations and no final settlement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled Thursday night that she is ready to fall back on the strategy of 'ping-ponging' alternatives back and forth between the two chambers. This risks more stalemate but also could provide a path for a final resolution of the issue before lawmakers go home for their spring recess next Friday."

Iraq Watch

Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung write in The Washington Post: "A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

"The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

"It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

"Since the Iraq invasion in 2003, the intelligence community has been more cautious than the military and the White House in assessing political, economic and security gains in Iraq. And the war's progress has been a prominent issue in the presidential campaign."

Robin Wright writes in The Washington Post: "U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker plans to leave Baghdad as early as January, leaving the most critical U.S. diplomatic post not long after the top military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is expected to rotate out of Iraq."

U.S. Attorney Watch

Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "A longtime protege of President Bush told former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias that he was fired for political reasons and that he shouldn't fight his ouster, Iglesias says in a new book.

"'This is political,' Iglesias recalls Texas U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton telling him shortly after he was ousted. 'If I were you, I'd just go quietly.'

"Iglesias, a former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, is one of eight federal prosecutors whose firings triggered a yearlong controversy at the Justice Department and led to the resignations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and 11 other Justice Department officials. . . .

"No one has determined who decided which prosecutors should be fired and why. Democrats say that must mean the White House was calling the shots, while the administration has said it demonstrates that the firings were blown out of proportion."

E-Mail Watch

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "A private group told a federal court that the Bush administration made apparently false and misleading statements in court about the White House e-mail controversy.

"The group asked the judge on Thursday to demand an explanation regarding alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January. . . .