Bush ignores intelligence reform ( Greeley)

[jbfam4]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel03.html
Bush ignores intelligence reform

December 3, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY


President Bush was re-elected because the majority of Americans thought he was doing a good job in the so-called war on terrorism. Now it turns out that he doesn't have enough clout with the Republicans in Congress to win approval for an anti-terrorism reform that almost everyone in the country supports, including the Republican members of the commission that recommended the reform.

The three congressmen figure, doubtless correctly, that they'll be around much longer than Bush and they can do pretty much whatever they want because of their mandate to impose "moral values" on the rest of us. Strong president indeed! He can't even force two members of the House of Representatives to back down on a bill that he professes to believe is crucial for the country.

But does he really believe it? Might his support for reform of the nation's intelligence-gathering apparatus be of the same order of sincerity as his off-repeated support for a "strong dollar"? Perhaps it's only verbal -- the kind of support that is expressed but not supported by any action. The euro has appreciated 30 percent against the dollar, yet the president sustains his image by proclaiming he's for a strong dollar. Similarly, he supports intelligence reform but won't do anything to push it through Congress. He has been re-elected and thus surpassed his father. He doesn't have to worry about re-election ever again.

One must remember that Bush opposed the establishment of a commission to investigate intelligence failures at the time of the World Trade Center attack. He was forced into establishing the commission by the protests of relatives of the victims. At first he resisted the report and then caved in again when pressure from the relatives gained national media attention. Might it be that he's just as happy to let the issue die, now that it is not a possible re-election issue? Might it be that the Republicans in Congress sense that the pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney for passage of the bill is something less than enthusiastic and that he and the president would be just as happy to forget about the whole thing now that the election is over? Strange things happen in Washington all the time, especially when the national media have lost interest in a subject.

The verbiage about the "war on terror" goes on, but in fact it must be over. Otherwise, the president would not permit intelligence reform to sink beneath the radar screen. Maybe the congressmen from Illinois, Wisconsin and California are not the only Neanderthals around.

[Fitz_G]

1. SRATFOR Morning Intelligence Brief

http://www.stratfor.com/


In its morning intelligence brief, STRATFOR, a private firm providing global intelligence for corporate interests, reported on the sad state of homeland security in the U.S. Our approach to homeland security and the GWOT as a failed policy is underscored in no uncertain terms by the analysis.

As stated in its Dec 1, 2004 Geopolitical Diary critiquing outgoing Tom Ridge, "Homeland defense was a profoundly flawed concept in the context of al Qaeda from the beginning." The diary goes on to state that the only tangible function of Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security has been to soothe a terrified public.

"It provided a sense that someone was trying to control the situation, even if we all understood the fact that the situation could not be controlled that way. Sometimes the efforts at reassurance became silly, as with the weird movement of the warning colors -- in apparently random motion. The massive pile of agencies called the Department of Homeland Security might not have added up to much more than the constituent parts, but the very massiveness of the effort provided a degree of comfort."

According to the summary, true security within the United States is impossible. "The United States cannot be defended against a global, sparse network of trained covert operatives. It is a target-rich environment -- meaning there are an awful lot of things that can be attacked -- surrounded by borders so long and porous that they cannot be sealed."

Finally, the diary summarizes our options as war or peace, and flies in the face of our policy of non-negotiation with "terrorists."

"In the end, however, homeland security is an illusion. Wars are not won defensively, and certainly this war can't be won that way. What defense there is consists of two parts. You can either negotiate a peace -- which depends on finding someone to negotiate with and determining if you are willing to pay the price. Or you can go out and attack and destroy the enemy, assuming you can find him and defeat him."

If we are to see a mushroom cloud in a U.S city, the question that will haunt Americans for generations to come will be if it happened merely because we were too proud a people to negotiate with "thugs." Such a policy smacks of the similar British attitude toward revolutionary peasant farmers of the American Continental Army. Eventually, England was forced to negotiate with those deemed beneath them.

[newyawker99]

2. Hi Fitz_G!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: