Category Archives: National Security

In Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA, the Washington Post gives us a peek at the train wreck in the making at the CIA.

It's obvious that Bush has nominated a partisan hack. He brought with him four aides, people I don't know much about, but whom the CIA people depict as having much to be modest about.

I wish I could stop there, and just pen another Bush-administration-incompetence story (which this seems to be), but it's more complicated than that. I actually think that a significant fraction of what Goss says is wrong with the CIA is likely to be right.

The problems at the CIA are pervasive. They start with a general lack of brilliance among the people who've been promoted in the agency. They run through bloat and hide-bound ways of work. The agency never recovered from the last purge, so it lacks 'assets' in key parts of the world, and is still shaking off its cold-war-centered focus. The CIA tortures people, which is no trivial matter.

Thus, even though it was politically expedient I have not been real comfortable with the war between the spooks at the Agency and their nominal political masters. It's never good when the secret police or the get into politics.

The agency is a serious mess and nowhere more than the dark side, the clandestine service. It needs a cleanup; it's just not at all likely that the ham-handed methods being used by Goss and his merry henchmen are likely to improve matters much. They might even make things worse.

Having just done a lot of airporting, and removed my non-metalic sneakers to get through the security theater at National, I'm pleased to learn that there is a limit to the amount of nudity that people will tolerate in the name of security that and that people in the US are resisting the airport equivalent of x-ray specs. (spotted via W. David Stephenson)

I actually had a great picture produced by the promoters of a very similar device that I wanted to publish in my Death of Privacy? article, but they refused to give me permission to use it, and even took it off line shortly after I enquired about it.

In my opinion, all you need to know to decide to vote against George Bush is that his administration has presided over a destruction of the rule of law unimagined since the Alien and Sedition Acts. I speak not of the Patriot Act, most and perhaps all of whose provisions (if not necessarily their uses) reasonable people might disagree about. Rather I mean the disregard for due process, basic human rights, and our treaty obligations. These actions are most visible in the torture memo scandal, the almost certainly related practice of torture in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the administration’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’. Recall also that Bush’s team recently lobbied Congress to change the law to allow the outsourcing of torture.

But perhaps you think this concern with fundamental legality and minimal human decency is some bleeding-heart luxury this nation can no longer afford now that 9/11 ‘changed everything’. So let’s agree to disagree as to the extent that the nation should pervert itself in its drive to teach others that we lack the guts to uphold our fundamental values when challenged. Instead, let’s work with that claim that all that matters in this election is which candidate will better preserve our physical safety.

If all that matters is our safety and security, then today’s news makes it clear beyond peradventure that the Bush administration is horribly dangerous to our national security.

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One of Krugman's best columns ever (where's that Pulitzer?): Feeling the Draft, makes exactly the right analogy:

Those who are worrying about a revived draft are in the same position as those who worried about a return to budget deficits four years ago, when President Bush began pushing through his program of tax cuts. Back then he insisted that he wouldn't drive the budget into deficit – but those who looked at the facts strongly suspected otherwise. Now he insists that he won't revive the draft. But the facts suggest that he will.

There were two reasons some of us never believed Mr. Bush's budget promises. First, his claims that his tax cuts were affordable rested on patently unrealistic budget projections. Second, his broader policy goals, including the partial privatization of Social Security – which is clearly on his agenda for a second term – would involve large costs that were not included even in those unrealistic projections. This led to the justified suspicion that his election-year promises notwithstanding, Mr. Bush would preside over a return to budget deficits.

It's exactly the same when it comes to the draft. Mr. Bush's claim that we don't need any expansion in our military is patently unrealistic; it ignores the severe stress our Army is already under. And the experience in Iraq shows that pursuing his broader foreign policy doctrine – the “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive war – would require much larger military forces than we now have.

This leads to the justified suspicion that after the election, Mr. Bush will seek a large expansion in our military, quite possibly through a return of the draft.

Mr. Bush's assurances that this won't happen are based on a denial of reality.

The poignant part of this is that four years ago when Krugman pointed out that the Bush economic policies didn't add up, the GOP slime machine started calling him shrill and suggesting he was out of the mainstream (which is code for something like 'commie' or 'we don't have to listen to him').

But Krugman was right about the deficit.

Boing Boing: Law enforcement memo of “imminent” terror attack?

It's can't-lose politically. Scare some marginal voters to vote for Bush, CYA if there is an attack, claim credit for stopping it if there is not.

Of course a climate of fear plays right into the terrorists' hands, but who knows, maybe they vote too…