Continuing with our theme of competency, or lack thereof, permeating the entire Bush Administration, let’s zero in on national security, the supposed strength of GOP and punditocracy-determined bane of Democrats.
News item: Kyle Foggo, the #3 individual in the CIA, is being investigated by the CIA inspector general as announced on March 3. Foggo is veeerrryyy ‘friendly’ with Brent Wilkes, the co-conspirator (read briber) in the Duke Cunningham case. The concern is whether Foggo steered CIA contracts Wilkes’ way.
Remember Dookie. the (now former) Republican congressman with the bribe menu, written on congressional stationary no less, featuring actions he would undertake and the fee due to him for such work? Wilkes greased Cunningham’s palm with over half a million dollars.
Yes, Foggo is an absolutely innocent man at the moment. But if he is charged and found guilty of aiding Wilkes, will he also be hit with treason charges? (treason defined as a betrayal of trust and violation of allegiance) After all, this is a very top level CIA official whose duties involve defending this country in a time of war. Any dereliction of such a function is egregious.
I’m sure Pat Roberts in the Senate and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will get right on this…by providing legislation and a legal interpretation respectively, honoring Foggo with a Presidential Medal of Freedom award.
News item: According to a recent report by Jeff Stein/Congressional Quarterly, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte is spending up to three hours a day, every day, swimming, getting massages, smoking cigars and lunching at the University Club, an exclusive Washington D.C. hangout.
According to Stein, the reality is Negroponte’s professional life of unhurried luxury is due to Donald Rumsfeld running his own operations in the Defense Department, over and above Negroponte’s supposed purview.
Thought that last item would make you feel safer and sleep better. Think Negroponte’s on the lookout at the Club for Al-Queda infiltrators?
Speaking of Rummy, since he has apparently moved front and center in the intelligence field, has he wiped the floor with those last few deadenders in Iraq? You know, the ones he blithely described on June 19, 2003 to the Associated Press: “In those regions where pockets of dead-enders are trying to reconstitute, Gen. (Tommy) Franks and his team are rooting them out…in short, the coalition is making good progress.”
But, of course, there are a litany of ‘Rumsfeld-oms’ involving national security, dramatically demonstrating the inept bungling of anything dear Donald gets ahold of and why we should feel oh so secure because we’re in the good hands of Rumsfeld.
Some examples:
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Rumsfeld’s February 7, 2003 statement to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: “It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
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Rumsfeld’s pre-war assessment that there was no need for several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq and its borders.
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Rumsfeld’s ignoring Coalition Provisional Authority Head Paul Bremer’s call for more troops to secure Iraq
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Rumsfeld defending prewar planning and invasion force size before a Senate panel: “The more troops you have, the more of an occupying power you are. The heavier the footprint, the more force protection you need, the more logistics you need and the more intrusive you are on the people of that country.”
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Ten months after the invasion of iraq, with the idea bubbling up that no weapons of mass destruction would be found, Rumsfeld said: “I suppose that’s possible, but not likely.”
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Rumsfeld, despite the majority of military injuries and deaths in Iraq being caused by lack of body and vehicle armor, answering a question by Army Specialist Thomas Wilson (“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?”) with: “As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want…you can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up.”
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Rumsfeld’s April 29, 2005 statement that predicted future historians would regard the Iraqi action as a model conflict.
Can Rumsfeld spell C-O-M-P-E-T-E-N-C-Y? Probably.
Can he exhibit C-O-M-P-E-T-E-N-C-Y? Absolutely, according to the only person who has any say in the matter, President Bush.
So, looking at Rumsfeld’s track record, followed by scrutiny of Bush’s burgeoning achievement portfolio, isn’t it fair and appropriate to ask if there a Mensa-type group, but in this case for dunces. headquartered at 1600 Pennyslvania? With satellite offices at the Pentagon and Langley, Virginia?
