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This is one where you really want to quote the whole thing.
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Finally, the war undermined foreign cooperation against terrorists. "It used to be that when relations became testy with our friends, at least the intelligence cooperation continued to work," says a former CIA station chief in a Mideast post. "I used to be able to walk into a president or a prime minister and say, `Look, here's the deal.' I guarantee, today they'd say, `Sure, get out of here.' " A former ambassador told me, "Cooperating with the United States starts being seen as a political liability. It becomes repugnant to the political class."
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It has been documented in a score of reports by the RAND Corporation, the General Accounting Office, the Markle and Century foundations, three national commissions, and a dozen congressional reports. Nor are others who have observed this fiasco close up shy about revealing their frustrations to reporters. "It's bad enough that they screwed it up before 9/11," says a career counterintelligence official -- not Clarke -- who served well into the Bush administration. "What's really galling is that these people screwed up afterwards."
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While the right lobbied, in the late 1940s, to start World War III, statesmen like George Kennan appreciated that containment of Soviet expansion and George Marshall's plan for the reconstruction of Europe added up to a policy that was more proportional and more effective. When right-wing extremists wanted to risk a nuclear exchange over Cuba, President Kennedy executed a policy that was both prudent and tough.
Now, courtesy of Bush's astonishing bungling, Democrats are on the verge of reclaiming that legacy -- not by being more-extreme saber rattlers, as some on their party's right commend, but by being better realists about how best to keep America safe. The country has never faced a more fateful choice.
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