You know what? I've read that
Podhoretz piece maybe a dozen times or more and you know what I'm struck with every time?
Nobody got it right.
Conservatives here seem to think, and Podhoretz certainly seems to think, that because everyone was about of the same mind on the WMDs that that gives the President of USA some cover, but it doesn't. It just makes him just as wrong as everyone else. Not a good position to be in if you are supposed to be leading rather than being part of the herd. I wouldn't follow any leader who, once he found out he's been had, wouldn't change course. If I was Bush I'd be really really pissed at the ComIntel and the SatIntel people over there at NSA. They fuckkked him.
Oh, and us too.
So, what are we doing, George, to make sure we know what we are talking about when it comes to say NUCLEAR weapons in North Korea?? or Iran? and are you really sure Libya has stripped itself of it's nuclear programs.? Have you expanded the number of on-the-ground eyes, you know, the kind of work Valerie Palme used to do before.... well, you know.
The answer is no. That's right. Despite the damning facts that none of our intelligence agencies, or anyone else's, came close to knowing anything for real about Iraq, we still don't have any kind of a working presence in Iran or North Korea. Isn't that pathetic? We continue to use SatIntel and a dozen crunching Cray computers to tell us what is going on. Probably good enough to see something major like the fueling of a rocket, but not that six North Korean assassins, disguised as farming equipment buyers, had traveled though China and disappeared.
If I was George I'd call in every swinging dick at NSA and the CIA and tell them to be damned sure about anything they were going to tell him, but if they were wrong, he's have them shot. (That would get their flabby data-mining asses in gear.)
Iraq is only the biggest mistake that Bush has made SO FAR. He now faces the other two of the Axis of Evil and both of them could give a sh*t what we think. He's had four and a half years to fix the intelligence agencies of the US, I don't think he's even knocked on the door over at the Puzzle Palace.
So I guess he'll be going with whatever everybody thinks rather than be a leader.
Joe(He's been thinking about doing the Social Security speech again)Nation