operation eliminate smart people

I haven't really posted my own thoughts on the ravaging occuring over at CIA... yet. I've been grappling with how to adequately express (as even-handedly as physically possible) how much this bothers me... but its starting to look like I'm the only person on the frickin planet who hasn't already said something about it. Maybe I'll just throw down these thoughts, and then post the all the articles that I saved... and be done with it. I think it's outrageous. I think it affects everyone... short term and long term. At the same time it's a glimpse into the looking glass of the how Bush administration intends to conduct business during its second term; more my way or the highway stuff. The "purge of the possibly soon-to-be disloyal" deals a major blow to intelligent decision-making. Certainly these folks could have helped prevent many bad decisions from occuring in the first place. But the administration’s problem here is its approach, which generally does not embrace an environment conducive to debating issues. Decisions often seem to just get made… period. End of discussion. That's a pretty poor framework for intelligent decision-making. As best I can tell their replacements have been chosen based on 2 factors: 'how close are they to the President?' and 'how loyal will they remain if things go bad?'. Rarely has the Bush administration replaced outgoing members of it's administration with officials based on qualifications or merit. I find that disturbing. I titled this "operation eliminate smart people", because hey, when in doubt be as direct as possible and call something exactly what it what it is. 'Operation purge dissent', 'operation eradicate intelligence', and 'curtail dissent' all sounded too simple, or too gratuitous, or just hackneyed to the point that they had no effect. By now the purge itself is no mystery... but the marginalization of these same people began long ago. Most probably back to the first day of the Bush administration. Look, terrorism was Clinton's problem, and from the Bush cabinet's perspective the nature of the threat from bin laden was overstated... right up until 9/11 happened. Terrorism didn't make it into the Bush administration's inner circle because they were interested in invading Iraq. They say so themselves. But that doesn't mean that people weren't working to hunt down al qaeda long before January 20th, 2001. Why do you think these guys are quitting? Bush and company's systematic disposal of employees who don't parrot political messages, flawed as many [read: most] of them are, is happening because these people remain an unmitigable risk for the Bush administration. There have been too many opportunities for intelligence officials to contradict public statements made by the President... whether it involves Iraq, WMD, al qaeda, whatever. This week the sharp end of the loyalty sword has cut through the CIA. The new director of intelligence has told his workforce at Langley:

"We support the Administration and its policies in our work. As Agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the Administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it - and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker." [via War and Piece]

That's pretty straight forward. Which agency is next is anyone's guess… fear is that next week, or sometime in the not-too-distant future, similar things will occur at State. More cutting will occur though, you can count on that. The Bush administration has a bad habit of looking for creative new ways to deal with whistleblowers. We played a lot of games and stretched a lot of facts to to legitimize the war in Iraq in the first place. And Saddam never struck me personally as threat that warranted the extent of destruction that we've already seen. America was told that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction... and that the use of these weapons by Saddam Hussein's regime, or the threat of the transfer of these weapons to terrorists constituted an emerging threat, unlike the type of threat that traditional rules of war were formulated to address. Namely, that YOU (if you're an American citizen) were directly impacted by this threat, and that by not dealing with it you may find yourself in peril. So it was incumbent upon the President to address this threat... preemptively... or else a mushroom cloud might appear over some city, somewhere sometime, which may or may not kill hundreds of thousands of people. When that didn't work we figured we'd better be liberating Iraqis instead. The problem? Seems to me reality in Iraq didn't materialize the way those who pushed so hard had expected. All of their screaming from the proverbial mountaintops about how Bill Clinton was so delinquent with his means of dealing with Iraq proved to be hollow, venomous, and barely more than partisan rhetoric. Rather than admit that they were wrong, they chose this route: 'blame the cia, claim the agency is in turmoil and then overhaul it in our favor'. That's the appearance anyway. This makes it easy for the Bush administration to exact revenge against many of the same folks who could have warned the administration before or during our march to war that: a) the weapons weren't there, or b) the War on Terror doesn't point to Iraq, or c) our military is stretched too thin, or perhaps most importantly d) our actions in Iraq are contributing to an increased threat of terrorism against Americans; the actual threat to you. Sorry for sounding so... whatever... but we must allow for honest dialogue to take place between competing points of view, especially when making decisions about issues that affect so many people, not just Americans. If we don't we're going to see a hell of a lot more mistakes like the ones we've already seen. Of immediate concern to me is how are these new people going to help fix the mess in Iraq? And I'm concerned that they're about to sidetrack themselves, again. -------------------------------------------------------- CIA Official Challenges Agency on Terrorism: LATimes CIA whistleblower sees 'long war': BBCNews Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA: WashingtonPost.com CIA plans to purge its agency: Newsday.com Two Top CIA Officials Quit Amid Revolt at Spy Agency: My Way News C.I.A. Shakeup Continues as 2 Senior Officials Quit: The New York Times Purging the disloyal at the CIA: Salon.com Politics CIA veterans clash with new chief: MSNBC It's war: the CIA vs Bush: The Australian An internal war at the CIA: Christian Science Monitor Goss Isn't Done With Housecleaning at CIA: LATimes CIA staff told to avoid politics: BBC NEWS the text of the DCI’s Statement to the Workforce: War and Piece PORTER GOSS' STATEMENT TO THE WORKFORCE: The Washington Note Archives