What can be done to "save" US intelligence?

[Robb]

I mean, it looks terrible when it appears we're stopping overseas flights based on surnames.

Whether you think intel is bad, or application is flawed, what's the fix? How can we improve either the system or the way it gets applied? Or is it just bad press?

[AndyTiedye]

1. They Stopped People From Voting in Florida Based on Surnames

some 90,000 who had never committed a crime.

No doubt they are being equally careless setting up the "no fly" list.

[SanchoPanza]

6. CIA Involvement?

I know of no proof of that. There is evidence that the Florida State Government had a hand in purging the voter roles, but the CIA?

[Spiderm0n]

2. when did the US ever have good intelligence?

[lcordero]

3. How about not letting it go overseas for any reason whatsoever

We are at the root of so many problems in so many other countries that it is awful. It's a good time right now to withdraw ALL "intelligence" assets from other countries.

[arewethereyet]

4. a cash infusion and elimination of beltway restrictions

lift of cash and arbitratry rules killed it, reversing those would help.

its never perfect, that would be way too costly.

[revcarol]

5. Close

the School of the Americas?

Actually, make "intelligence" less political by getting rid of all Bushies. Seems Clinton didn't have any trouble finding out who blew up the WTC, and prosecuted them. Everything now is "political," which means the test of COMMON SENSE is not applied.

[SanchoPanza]

7. The CIA works when the administration doesn't play games with it...

... On behalf of wealthy business interests. Whenever the CIA has gone beyond simple intelligence gathering at the behest of corrupt officials (on both sides of the Party divide, by the way), it has generally done an excellent job. In recent years its efforts at analyzing terrorist threats have been pretty much above board and effective. The recent flap with the CIA and the Bush Administration is something new, though not entirely, as the level of cherry-picking of intelligence by top officials in the Executive are unprecedented.

I say "not entirely", because there have been instances during the Cold War where CIA reports were taken out of context, inflated, or flat out rewritten by administrations to justify actions to the public. Increase in weapons production and general military spending to counter "narrowing gaps" with similar levels in the Soviet Union are the most egregious examples. But there has never been an administration, until now, wherein the Vice President and those in his office met with desk-level analysts at Langley to "go over" reports about WMD in Iraq.

Also keep in mind that the CIA is not without its own defenses against administration over-involvement. Most of these are reactive measures, predominantly the Agency holdovers in the press that were put in place during the Vietnam era to "talk up the war". Walter Pinkus of the Washington Post is the prime example, and he wrote an op-ed after Director Tenet "fell on his sword" over the Niger-Lie debacle that essentially said the administration was full of sh*t. Tenet had personally warned the White House against using the Niger claim in the SOTU long before the speech was written, and I would not be surprised if Pinkus' op-ed was a result of his CIA connections.

[moondust]

8. They've already done it.

It's called <cough><cough> Homeland Security <cough>. It is costing the U.S. taxpayer a f'ing fortune and BY GOD IT WORKS! You don't believe it then you go Gitmo for more education!

[are_we_united_yet]

9. I don't blame the CIA

In fact I've come to respect this group of folks greatly.

Now the W administration........

[nightperson]

10. I still think the "intelligence feud" is a huge story

and apparently GNN thinks so too-http://www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc3678.html. How safe are we if there's an ongoing open war between the intelligence community and the neocon branch of the administration? How smoothly will any security operations here or abroad function if these two huge players are not "on the same page"? How many other stories and problems lead back to this? Why isn't this being covered more? Reporters are scared? There's no audience? People watch Alias on TV, don't they? Also, when the Plame/Wilson story first broke, I thought what a great ad it was for the "soft on defense" Democrats: an unmasked spook household revealed to have contributed to Kerry! "If you're concerned about proliferation, you're concerned about Kerry!:smoke: ". I think that angle would play well in proverbial Peoria. No one seems to have emphasized it. Please folks, this is an issue for all Democrats, hold off on the Skull and Bones comments :) , this totally works for us! And, it might even be important to non-Democrats.:scared: :nuke: :scared: :nuke: