Mark Steyn: Plame bigger than Watergate
[link|http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-10-11&id=3592|Curioser and curioser]
Excerpt:
No, this isn\ufffdt Watergate; it\ufffds bigger than that. The version of the story that still fits the facts is in that Bob Novak Sun-Times column from July. Novak wanted to know why Wilson had been chosen to go to Africa. It\ufffds one thing not to be a card-carrying neocon, quite another to be as antipathetic to the administration and the war as this fellow. The White House asked the CIA, the CIA recommended Wilson, and their recommendation was accepted automatically. But what the original leakers told Novak was that it was Mrs Wilson who\ufffdd proposed her husband for the job. The Company responded that their counter-proliferation officials came up with Wilson and they only used the wife to contact him.
It doesn\ufffdt really matter which version you believe, because the end result\ufffds the same: an agency known to be opposed to war in Iraq sent an employee\ufffds spouse also known to be opposed to war in Iraq on a perfunctory joke mission. And, after eight days sipping tea and meeting government officials in one city of one country, Ambassador Wilson gave a verbal report to the CIA and was horrified to switch on his TV and see Bush going on about what British Intelligence had learned about Saddam and Africa.
I say:
Heads gotta roll, dammit. The line between incompetence and treason is so blurry now that the distinction no longer signifies. We need to clean house in the CIA.
Excerpt:
Why is this important? Because, in a nutshell, Iraq is the last war. That\ufffds to say, the last war in which the Bush administration will spend the months beforehand amassing a quarter of a million troops on an enemy\ufffds borders. Doing it that way gives the enemy too long to enlist his own forces \ufffd the Western media, the UN and the moth-eaten French pantomime mule of Messrs Chirac and de Villepin. All these parties are dedicated to ensuring that even when the Americans win, they lose. The speed with which they\ufffdve managed to taint victory in Iraq is impressive, though it bears no relation to anything so tiresome as reality. So from hereon in engagements in the war of terror will be swift, sudden and as low-key as can be managed. The US will depend not on multilateralism but bilateralism \ufffd the many agreements the Americans have signed for base rights and training missions and other below-the-radar stuff from the Middle East through old Soviet Central Asia to the Pacific. There will be, faute de mieux, a reliance on light and mobile configurations and special forces.
But all these engagements will depend on good intelligence. If the Third Infantry Division rolls across the Syrian border, it can handle anything Boy Assad can throw at it. But, if you\ufffdre sending in a few Delta Force guys to take discreet care of a small problem, you need to be very well informed of the facts on the ground. Two years after 9/11, the CIA is still not up to the job of human intelligence. It has no idea of what\ufffds going on in Iran or North Korea. It relies on aerial photographs and \ufffdchatter\ufffd \ufffd which is a fancy term for monitoring e-mail. But it has no insight whatsoever into the minds of the Politburo or the mullahs. So, when it comes to their nuclear ambitions, all we have is guesswork \ufffd or, more accurately, wishful thinking, given that both Hashemi Rafsanjani and the Norks have promised to use their nukes as soon as they can.
I say:
Our military is doing its job. Our Commander in Chief - as such - is doing his job. The CIA is not doing its job. Immigration is not doing its job. The State department is bungling its job. Justice may be bungling, too. At least they're trying to clean house at the FBI.
We have got to fire some bureaucrats. Or better yet, put some in jail.
By the way, if we won with "Clinton's" military, is this by the same token "Clinton's" CIA? Just asking.
