Thursday, January 8, 2009
The day’s top political news:
Obama and the budget limits
The forecast of a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion one-year federal budget deficit makes it harder for President-elect Barack Obama to win broad support for a massive stimulus package.
With his party controlling both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Obama's still likely to get the OK for spending and tax cuts that cost $1 trillion or more over two years -- designed to jump-start the economy and create 3 million jobs.
However, while many economists, business groups and politicians agree on the need for something dramatic, Obama now concedes that he'll have to wait until February to get a bill to sign.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/59217.html
Obama and his Gays in the military commitment
Sixteen years after Bill Clinton tried to end restrictions on gays in the military, the US armed forces under Barack Obama may be forced to give homosexuals the same welcome as non-gays.
Under president Clinton, the policy that once saw homosexuals discharged from US military service evolved to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," allowing gays to remain in the military so long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation.
The law however still has seen a large number of dismissals of gay service members. Since its enactment, some 12,500 soldiers have been sent packing for acknowledging their homosexuality or after being outed as gay.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090107/ts_alt_afp/usmilitarygays_newsmlmmd
Harry Reid and Senate Democrats cave on “Senataor Burris”
Democrats in the Senate are in a rabid frenzy known as “crawfishing”
Senate appointee Roland Burris met with top Senate Democrats Wednesday, who seemed to do an about-face from the vocal opposition they expressed last week about his appointment.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pick to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate says the only thing he regrets is not taking the oath with the newest members of the 111th Congress.
http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/burris.senate.democrats.2.901914.html
Opinion:
What Young voters are thinking an interview with a Young Republican
(Apparently, the Internet gods failed to post yesterday’s web site – sorry. We are, therefore repeating this interview)
The Republican Party did not do as well as usual with young voters in the last election. I found a Young Republican activist (He was a full time volunteer in the Bush 2004 campaign, and worked in the Romney Campaign in 2008)
His responses are often surprising, and occasionally somewhat shocking – but perhaps we can learn something. We need to do a better job of communications, obviously.
The interview:
Political Truth and Fact: How would you describe the image most college voters with whom you talk have of the Republican Party?
College Republican: The Republican Party has become synonymous with George W. Bush - not simply the person but his views. Christian, supportive of capitalism (and big business) and aggressive in foriegn policy.
In the south especially, there are strong demographic groups that appeal to this - hunters, military enlistees, those stemming from a strong religious family.
The majority of college kids have far more simpler and self serving interests
Most don't want to go in the military, so they fear aggressive military policy
Political Truth and Fact: Are you saying college voters are anti Christian, anti capitalism and dont want to oppose radical Islamic terror?
College Republican: Not entirely. Most college kids are simply self serving, an understandable mindset for people there age. .]: They are not anti-Christian but anti-Christian values that frown upon sex, drinking and lack of drugs. While not every college student is guilty of all of the above, most are guilty of at least one.
Political Truth and Fact: BTW military service is voluntary these days
College Republican: College students are worried about the D word - draft.
Political Truth and Fact: No draft is likely, the last attempt a couple of years ago got only two votes.
College Republican: No draft is unlikely in reality, buy not in perception.
College Republican: There are three different camps (of college-age voters)
There are those that want to keep the status quo.
There are those that want the legalization of marijuana.
And there are those that want the legalization of all drug.
The latter is a very very small fraction.
Political Truth and Fact: What does the Republican party have to do to attract more young voters?
College Republican: My personal belief is that the Republican party has the tools to win over young voters. I think most College Students don't want to the Government to have a great presence in their life - no more than they want their parents.
Ron Paul demonstrated that the Republican Party name does not mean you throw away the youth vote. In fact neither Kerry nor Gore carried the youth vote by a great margin.
Political Truth and Fact: Looking toward the 2010 elections, what do you think the Republicans need to do?
College Republican: I think the Republican Party needs to evaluate its message. As a libertarian minded Republican, I believe the current Party panders too far to the evangelical vote - but I don't really think that hurts them in elections as much as simply the image of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is seen as the party of rich, old, Chritisian white men, the truth of that is irrelevant.
College Republican: I think the tone of the last election killed John McCain.
McCain and Palin started preaching about "the Real America", I think such rhetoric is divisive and hurts not only the candidate, but the party.
Rasmussen had a poll indicating that more people though Bill Ayers hurt McCain more than Obama, for example. The tone in which McCain and more importantly Palin turned people off.
Political Truth and Fact: What does "the Real America" mean to you?
College Republican: Two things. My ideal of the "real America" is the country - the mixture of cultures, of people, of ideas and philosophy. I don't think the country farmer in Iowa is any more "American" than a Civil Rights attorney in San Francisco.
The term "the real America" strikes me as divisive and damaging. I think preaching that there are "real Americans" and "fake Americans" does far more harm than most of the enemies overseas.
I think America is the greatest country on Earth because of its ideals and strength of people. I stand that united this country can defeat any enemy, overcome any obstical, meet any challenge. But only if we stay united.
I believe the greatest threat to this country is not Iran or Russia or Communism or Terrorism - but division.
The greatest civilizations have fallen from the inside, not the out.
Political Truth and Fact: Does the internal betrayal by much of the media and by extreme liberals not bother people your age at all.
College Republican: I think the majority of college students, like the majority of people, are either ignorant or apathetic about it.
Among the politically minded and civically motivated, I think they are bothered by it - even those whose ideologies match what the MSM is preaching.
Thats why you see blogs becoming more important than the NYT or MSNBC.
Political Truth and Fact:: Then the biggest challenge to Republicans is communications -- telling its story effectively?
College Republican: Yes.
Absolutely.
Political Truth and Fact: In your view, which GOP presidents best represent what you want to see in future leadrs?
College Republican: I loved the idea of Sarah Palin, but I think her image has been forever destroyed and I think she was overwelmed by the national spotlight.
Political Truth and Fact:: Was that her fault or that of a vicious media?
College Republican: I think it was her fault, the media's fault and John McCain's campaigns fault.
College Republican: I respect Palin too much to simply believe she simply followed orders.
I love the idea of Ron Paul, but he is too extreme - especially on global affairs.
Political Truth and Fact: Based on what you now know, understand and believe, what's your future prediction for American politics?
College Republican: I believe my generation will be the most politically active generation in American history. I think the election of Obama is a huge one for my generation. Never before has a "youth" candidate won an election.
Political Truth and Fact: You aren’t saying you support Obama surely?
College Republican: No, but I do not fear Obama and I do see Obama's election - perhaps more than Obama the candidate or Obama the President - as a huge event for several demographic groups.
Political Truth and Fact: Any thoughts about 2010 ?
College Republican: I think 2010 will indicate whether the GOP has a chance to win in 2012. If the Republican Party does not make a conscious and aggressive effort to change its image, then the Party will be in the minority for several elections.
Of course this assumes the Democrats do not go to extraordinary lengths to destroy themselves.
Some things we might change, some things that are a bit troubling, but lessons for our future consideration none the less.
Buddy
Top Blogs of the Day
The overview:
1.
TV networks: Don't raise eligibility questions
Fox, CNN, MSNBC all refuse permission for advertising time
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Barack Obama's campaign officials and transition office repeatedly have rejected reporters' requests for comment on questions raised over his lack of documentation regarding his birth and the resulting concerns over his eligibility to be president. Now a number of media organizations apparently don't want questions raised either.
WND columnist Janet Porter told WND she found that out when her organization, Faith2Action.org, tried to purchase airtime to publicize information about the eligibility concerns.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=85587
2.
AN AWFUL PICK
RALPH PETERS
WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.
Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.
The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.
Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.
Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.
The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.
Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.
3.
Intelligence and its reality from one who knows
To start with the bottom line, the C.I.A.’s human spy business is not answering the hardest questions. How can I know this, three years out of touch with the secret stuff? The answer is rather simple: because Osama bin Laden is still the head of Al Qaeda. And no one has been held accountable for failing to catch him.
By the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, every serving C.I.A. officer — indeed, every American — knew that the agency had one prime mission: “Get him!” But, after more than seven years and billions of dollars, we have failed. I recognize much has been done to damage Al Qaeda’s networks but, make no mistake, no amount of “rendition” of bin Laden lieutenants can mask our failure to bring to justice the man who ordered 9/11.
There are other failures too, less dramatic perhaps but of even greater consequence. The clandestine creep of nuclear know-how threatens to put the worst weapons into the worst hands. If North Korea or Iran, or Shangri-La for that matter, claims the right to develop a nuclear fist, our intelligence services should know every detail about that program. Yet we collectively fail over and over again when North Korea tests a missile or nuclear reactor construction in the eastern Syrian desert come as a surprise. If the C.I.A.’s human spy arm was operating as a private business, it would be running at a loss. Think Detroit, not 007.
Why? First, the agency is simply too insular. It does not sufficiently tap into the expertise that exists across the breadth of America. The human spy components of the C.I.A. live in a cocoon of secrecy that breeds distrust of outsiders. This is one reason very few officers have BlackBerrys, and those few who do usually leave them in their cars when they go to work. Despite their reputation as plugged-in experts on other countries, many C.I.A. officers do not even have Internet access at their desks. Worse yet, they don’t think they need it.
HTTP://WWW.NYTIMES.COM/2008/12/14/OPINION/14BROWN.HTML?EM
Now, the rest of these stories:
1.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=85587
TV networks: Don't raise eligibility questions
Fox, CNN, MSNBC all refuse permission for advertising time
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
(NOTE: The frantic efforts by the Obama campaign, the mainstream media, and Obama himself serve as a more convincing plea of “guilty” to these charges than are necessary for intelligent people to draw the obvious conclusion – Obama was NOT born on US soil and is NOT eligible to serve as president. But with Liberals, the Constitution is of little or no importance)
Barack Obama's campaign officials and transition office repeatedly have rejected reporters' requests for comment on questions raised over his lack of documentation regarding his birth and the resulting concerns over his eligibility to be president. Now a number of media organizations apparently don't want questions raised either.
WND columnist Janet Porter told WND she found that out when her organization, Faith2Action.org, tried to purchase airtime to publicize information about the eligibility concerns.
She told WND that national networks that refused to sell her time for a 60-second commercial included CNBC, MSNBC, Headline News, CNN and Fox. Washington, D.C., outlets for the same organizations did the same.
"With the date for congressional approval (of the Electoral College today), we wanted them to have access to the facts," she told WND. "Congress is sworn to uphold the Constitution."
She said the donors who contributed the funding that was to be used for the ads were being contacted to find out whether they wanted to reach another direction in the media.
"Heard rumors about Barack Obama's citizenship? These are the facts," the ad states.
It cites a statement from the president-elect's paternal grandmother that she was present at his birth in Kenya, his refusal to release his original birth certificate, his attendance at school in Indonesia "as Barry Soetoro when only Indonesia citizens were permitted to attend," and Obama's travel to Pakistan in 1981 "when it was illegal to enter as a U.S. citizen."
Join the campaign to urge the Supreme Court to take the eligibility question seriously by FedExing the justices.
It concludes, "Our Constitution still matters."
"As requested, we backed up every sentence of this ad, and still it was rejected," Porter said. "What does that say about freedom of speech when we not only cannot count on the media to cover the story, but we can't even buy time to publicize what may be the biggest story of the century."
She raised several questions about the issue in her recent column.
"What if an impostor from another country ran for the presidency and won?" she asks. "What if the media blocked any news of his birthplace and citizenship? What if the media censorship even blocked paid advertising which tried to expose it?
"What if no one had the courage to challenge or verify it? What if he was inaugurated illegally? What if the military had to answer to a commander in chief who was illegitimate? What if every law he signed was invalid?"
And, she wonders, "What if it all happened on our watch?"
WND reported the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled Friday a conference – a private meeting at which justices consider whether to take individual cases – on a lawsuit challenging Obama's eligibility.
Twice before the justices have heard the questions, and twice before they've decided to ignore them.
The lingering questions continue to leave a cloud over the impending presidency of a man whose relatives have reported he was born in Kenya and who has decided, for whatever reason, not to release a bona fide copy of his original birth certificate in its complete form.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed around the nation alleging Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the legal challenges have alleged Obama was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. The woman identified by Obama as his American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time – especially if it took place in a foreign country and the man identified as his father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan citizen.
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 200,000 others and sign the petition demanding proof of eligibility now!
Other challenges also have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. Such cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Several details of Obama's past have added twists to the question of his eligibility and citizenship, including his family's move to Indonesia when he was a child, his travel to Pakistan in the '80s when such travel was forbidden to American citizens and conflicting reports from Obama's family about his place of birth.
On Friday the justices will consider Philip J. Berg's Petition for Writ of Certiorari.
"This is a historic occasion that will impact the office of the president of the United States as never before. No one has ever brought an action against a president-elect candidate challenging his eligibility to serve based on the 'natural born' citizen requirement provided in the United States Constitution, Article II Section 1," said a statement on Berg's ObamaCrimes.com website.
Berg suggested if Obama "is allowed to be sworn in as president of the United States, there will be substantial and irrevocable harm to the stability of the United States of America and to its citizens."
"Because Barack Obama is not a 'natural born' citizen as required by the United States Constitution, then all of his actions as president would be null and void," Berg said.
Last month, WND reported similar concerns raised in a lawsuit filed in California.
"Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void," argues a case brought on behalf of Ambassador Alan Keyes, also a presidential candidate. "Americans will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal."
Berg, who has another case on the issue pending on behalf of a retired military officer, earlier stated, "I am determined, on behalf of the 320 million citizens in the United States, to see that 'our U.S. Constitution' is followed. Specifically, in the case of Soetoro a/k/a Obama, does he meet the constitutional qualifications for president?
"I am appalled that the mainstream media continue to ignore this issue as we are headed to a 'constitutional crisis.' There is nothing more important than our U.S. Constitution and it must be enforced," he said.
The Supreme Court also has another hearing on an issue raised by Berg for Jan. 16, and the Supreme Court just confirmed today yet another conference is scheduled Jan. 23 on a separate case, this one handled by California attorney Orly Taitz, challenging Obama's eligibility.
Because of the high stakes, WND earlier launched a letter campaign to contact Electoral College members and urge them to review the controversy.
That followed a campaign that sent more than 60,000 letters by overnight delivery to the U.S. Supreme Court when one case contesting Obama's eligibility for the Oval Office was pending.
A separate petition, already signed by more than 200,000 also is ongoing asking authorities in the election to seek proof Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution.
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi went to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.
The biggest question was why, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, Obama hasn't simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=85587
2.
AN AWFUL PICK
RALPH PETERS
WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.
Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.
The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.
Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.
Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.
The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.
Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.
After the military, the intel community is the most complex arm of government. You can't do on-the-job training at the top. While a CIA boss needn't be a career intelligence professional, he or she does need a deep familiarity with the purposes, capabilities, limitations and intricacies of intelligence.
Oh, and you'd better understand the intelligence bureaucracy.
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was blindsided - and appalled - by the Obama mafia's choice, has the essential knowledge of how the system works. She, or a similar expert, should have gotten this nod. But the president-elect wanted a clean-slate yes-man, not a person of knowledge and integrity.
We're witnessing the initial costs of Obama's career-long lack of interest in foreign policy, the military and intelligence. He doesn't think the top job at the CIA's important and just wants political cover on that flank. (Guess we got Panetta because Caroline Kennedy has another engagement.)
Forget a "team of rivals." Obama's creating a campaign staff for 2012.
Of course, he's reeling from the shrill rage of the Moveon.org crowd over his nomination of grown-ups to be his national-security adviser, director of national intelligence, administrator of veterans' affairs and, yes, secretary of state. (By the way, how could Hillary be dumb enough to accept a job where success is impossible?)
Panetta's appointment is a sop to the hard left, a signal that intelligence will be emasculated for the next four - or eight - years.
Think morale's been bad at the CIA? Just wait.
Conservatives played into this scenario by insisting that any CIA analysis that didn't match the Bush administration's positions perfectly amounted to an attack on the White House. Well, sorry. The intelligence community's job isn't to make anybody feel good - its core mission is to provide nonpartisan analysis to our leaders.
To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background - none - in any of these areas. He was never interested.
If you handed Leon Panetta a blank map of Asia, I'd bet my life he couldn't plot Baghdad, Kabul or Beijing within 500 miles of their actual locations. (Maybe he can see China from his California think tank?)
This shameless hack appointment is the first action by the incoming administration that seriously worries me. Get intelligence wrong and you get dead Americans.
Ralph Peters was a career intelligence officer in the US Army.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/01072009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/an_awful_pick_148973.htm
3.
Intelligence Boosters
ART BROWN
the most formidable issues facing the new president.
THIS is the article I never intended to write. For former C.I.A. officers, the tipping point between debate-generating critique and “if they had only listened to me” pontification is easy to cross, and I had hoped to avoid the latter by simply refraining from attempts at the former. So let’s be clear, I am not claiming to have been prescient. It took more than three years outside the agency for me to truly understand its problems and to see a possible solution.
To start with the bottom line, the C.I.A.’s human spy business is not answering the hardest questions. How can I know this, three years out of touch with the secret stuff? The answer is rather simple: because Osama bin Laden is still the head of Al Qaeda. And no one has been held accountable for failing to catch him.
By the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, every serving C.I.A. officer — indeed, every American — knew that the agency had one prime mission: “Get him!” But, after more than seven years and billions of dollars, we have failed. I recognize much has been done to damage Al Qaeda’s networks but, make no mistake, no amount of “rendition” of bin Laden lieutenants can mask our failure to bring to justice the man who ordered 9/11.
There are other failures too, less dramatic perhaps but of even greater consequence. The clandestine creep of nuclear know-how threatens to put the worst weapons into the worst hands. If North Korea or Iran, or Shangri-La for that matter, claims the right to develop a nuclear fist, our intelligence services should know every detail about that program. Yet we collectively fail over and over again when North Korea tests a missile or nuclear reactor construction in the eastern Syrian desert come as a surprise. If the C.I.A.’s human spy arm was operating as a private business, it would be running at a loss. Think Detroit, not 007.
Why? First, the agency is simply too insular. It does not sufficiently tap into the expertise that exists across the breadth of America. The human spy components of the C.I.A. live in a cocoon of secrecy that breeds distrust of outsiders. This is one reason very few officers have BlackBerrys, and those few who do usually leave them in their cars when they go to work. Despite their reputation as plugged-in experts on other countries, many C.I.A. officers do not even have Internet access at their desks. Worse yet, they don’t think they need it.
Second, the C.I.A. has a terrible problem with quality control. When I was still there, for example, C.I.A. spies reported on several occasions that Al Qaeda had plans to attack American military bases overseas — in countries that a quick Web search would have shown had no such bases. Quantity outweighed quality as folks in the spy business focused not on accuracy or impact, but on increasing amounts of product.
And that brings us to perhaps the most numbing factor, the lack of performance accountability. In my years in the agency, I cannot recall a single case where anyone was fired for failing to perform. I cannot even remember anyone being demoted. There is simply no job-threatening penalty for mediocrity. Think of this on Jan. 20, when we’re likely to see Osama bin Laden sending an inauguration greeting to the new president.
So let me float a proposal borrowed from the business world. If you want to find answers to the hardest questions, why not reach broadly into the expertise of the country and assemble the best spy team possible?
On Shangri-La’s nuclear ambitions, it would probably mean including a few engineers who build our own bombs. They could make sure you understand the missing parts of the puzzle and how those parts may be hidden. You’d also want successful entrepreneurs — both American and allied — who know how to make deals in Shangri-La and can point you to others who deal there more often.
It goes further. Good freelance reporters know how to find sources to fill in a hard story. The expertise of academia, where decades of insight often go untouched, could be balanced with a seasoned detective or tough prosecutor adept at turning a crook. The more military the topic, the more military folks you would want on its pursuit. The spy business simply isn’t that difficult, and the sleight-of-hand techniques of the trade, some reaching back to Joshua’s spies at Jericho, can be fairly quickly learned. It is creativity, judgment and the ability to reach a goal on time that are hard to teach.
The agency would not lure these outside experts with a career or give them ranks or titles. That only breeds the ladder-climbing trap that sees newly minted C.I.A. managers, six months into their assignments, planning how they might climb that next rung. Rather, the agency could compile teams of accomplished Americans for a fixed period of service and then let them return to their respective fields. (Much of the work could be done over the Internet, allowing some of them to keep their day jobs.) Their incentive would be the chance to make a real difference, with maybe a decent payment at the end if the project is a success.
Yes, there are some obstacles here. Using “normal” citizens in a covert role could require giving them legal protections that may not exist right now. Getting consensus among policymakers and Congress, and isolating the hard questions from the headlines of the day, will be a difficult challenge. And, more insidiously, wounded institutional pride at the C.I.A. could generate bureaucratic knife-fighting by employees who would rather see the quest fail than give credit to “amateur” operators. The safe bet is that none of this will ever happen.
But is it not worth trying? It would certainly be worth breaking some existing rules if we could really assemble a better spying apparatus from the best parts America has to offer. When it comes to the hard stuff, we couldn’t do much worse.
Art Brown, a 25-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, was the head of the Asia division of the agency’s clandestine service from 2003 to 2005.
HTTP://WWW.NYTIMES.COM/2008/12/14/OPINION/14BROWN.HTML?EM
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