These days, the term 'military/police intelligence' is beginning to sound like a joke - not least for the simple reason that in many of the so-called intelligence reports we hear of, there seems to be precious little intelligence in them!

The latest contribution to this world of non-letters is the so-called intelligence report that has been leaked by the Thai Nation newspaper, which purports to be a high-level document that has recently been left on the desk of Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The report claims that leaders of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) were somehow involved in helping or supporting the opposition groups in southern Thailand. The basis of this claim seems to be a meeting that PAS leaders were alleged to have organised in Malaysia, but PAS insists that such a meeting never even took place.

What seems to be absent from the report is the fact that the recent spate of violence in southern Thailand has attracted the concern and attention of people all over the world, and not the Islamists of Malaysia exclusively.

There are many ways that one can read and react to the Thai intelligence report. The cynical approach would be to simply state that this was nothing more than a feeble attempt at white-washing the recent killings of more than 80 civilian protesters at the town of Tak Bai.

Most of the protesters were killed when they were crammed into trucks and piled on top of one another, then made to endure a gruelling five-hour journey to a police detention centre. Along the way, nearly 80 of them suffocated or were crushed to death in the vehicles. (And the death toll appears to be rising, as reports of more deaths are being made public.)