Wake up America. Your President doesn’t give a flying monkey about the security interests of the United States. Not one bit. Oh he talks a good game… with us or against us… bring ’em on…. you know, all the fun stuff. But actions, as we all know, speak louder than words. And his actions are a risk to you and yours.
First Bush and his NSA decide a silly thing like “bin Laden determined to strke in US” is just Richard Clarke reading tea leaves.
Then Bush and his cronies decide to lie about “intelligence” to take America to war with Iraq.
Not content with that, they out a covert CIA officer who was working on those same WMD issues that were so high on the Presidential radar he needed to go bomb someone to sleep well at night. This vendetta put not only Valerie Plame at risk, but intelligence officers and sources around the world.
And now this.
President Bush last week appointed nine campaign contributors, including three longtime fund-raisers, to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a 16-member panel of individuals from the private sector who advise the president on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence efforts.
Over half of this group are now Bush cronies. Do they have any expertise with Foreign Intelligence? Are they qualified to advise the most powerful person on the planet on sensitive matters pertaining to foreign threats? Do they even know the difference between Sunnis and Kurds?
Let’s see who some of them are:
Bush reappointed William DeWitt, an Ohio businessman who has raised more than $300,000 for the president’s campaigns, for a third two-year term on the panel. Originally appointed in 2001, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, DeWitt, who was also a top fund-raiser for Bush’s 2004 Inaugural committee, was a partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Other appointees included former Commerce secretary Don Evans, a longtime Bush friend; Texas oilman Ray Hunt; Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, and former congressman and 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton. Like DeWitt, Evans and Hunt have also been longtime Bush fund-raisers, raising more than $100,000 apiece for the president’s campaigns. Barksdale and five other appointees–incoming chairman Stephen Friedman, former Reagan adviser Arthur Culvahouse, retired admiral David Jeremiah, Martin Faga and John L. Morrison–were contributors to the president’s 2004 re-election effort. Friedman also served a year on the intelligence board under President Bill Clinton, who appointed chairmen with very different profiles from Bush’s Pioneers: former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William Crowe, former Defense secretary Les Aspin, former House speaker Tom Foley and former GOP senator Warren Rudman. (Clinton did also appoint two donors who gave $100,000 apiece to the Democratic National Committee: New York investment banker Stan Shuman and Texas real estate magnate Richard Bloch.)
According to the White House, the intelligence advisory board offers the president “objective, expert advice” on the conduct of foreign intelligence, as well as any deficiencies in its collection, analysis and reporting…… Indeed, its members have been considered important presidential advisers, receiving the highest level security clearance and issuing classified reports and advice to the president.
Yet, as with many federal panels, membership on the board has also been doled out to top campaign contributors and supporters of the president–a move the White House defends since panelists are not required to have significant intelligence experience.
That’s rich. The mandate of the panel is to provide “objective, expert advice” but the White House turns it on its head and appoints people who won’t be objective as they are Bush insiders and defines “expert advice” as not being required to have significant intelligence experience (kinda like the head of FEMA not being required to have any disaster relief experience ~ Bush is obviously a big proponent of on the job training)… Looking on the bright side, they won’t have anyone to question the next batch of fake documents proving Syria is selling radioactive donkeys to the Taliban.
Now that’s progress.
Guess you just have to laugh until the next disaster in the US when the talking heads on TV keep repeating the spin that “no one predicted the levees would break”…