A Lack of Feith

I mouth off every so often, ... you know, venture along a line of thought where my brain has never really lived, and then, ... offer an unfounded opinion of the way the World should be, from my specious point of view. I awaken feeling stupid in the morning, as should we all when we take those steps into the unknown and try to play God. There are those things I know a lot, and a little, and not at all.

Let's you and I, for sake of argument here, assume that the most secret intelligence information is not even accessible to either of us. You know, ... the number of nukes held by Israel, the sites of our black hole CIA prisons overseas, The silverware count for the kitchen at the White House, or even who cleans it, ... and things like that. There are folks who know those things, but I don't. They are paid to know and learn those things, and I am paid for other things.

Follow me here then as I take you to a time and place, in late 2001, or perhaps early 2002, when there was a focused assessment of what we knew about Saddam's Iraq. We needed to and wanted to know what they had and wanted to have, what they did and wanted to do. We cruised freely in the Northern and Southern No-Fly zones, ... closer and closer to the margins of them, seeking to light up their radar stations, ... looking for excuses to take out site after site. There never seemed to be a shortage of them.

Even these events were not enough, never enough, to justify positioning the last Super-Power against a restrained has-been dictator, stitched tightly into geographic boundaries of our making in 1991, and then declaring war, ... No, I mis-spoke, for there was no declaration of war whatsoever, just the empowerment of a President to prosecute what would in any other age been known as "War". So much the easier to allow Congress the luxury of avoiding guilt in the end, I suppose. What a tragedy that a body so large, yet so unrepresentative and irresponsible, could or would dispense so hastily with their duty to discuss and debate the reasons for taking our Nation and our Forces to war.

Into this time, when our Nation and our People sought redress for attacks on our soil and against our people, it was easy for men to second guess the reasoning of others. Why had the FAA and the Armed Forces done what they had (or not done what they should) on 9-1-1? In the times of such events in our history, we learn after the fact that there is a flood of intelligence, difficult to gather and worse to understand, which flows among and toward our leaders. Why had the government not investigated the debris, to determine the true causes of the catastrophic failure of these huge buildings to a cause they were designed to withstand? And when the war was begun, ... why were there still doubts that Iraq had any part in these provocative attacks two years before?

And that, sadly, is the consequence of the Pentagon IG's Report this week. In the DOD, there existed a department specifically created, it seems, to set policy before understanding, to question the findings and wisdom, and the very foundation of our intelligence against our worst enemies around the world. They contend, at this late date, in their positions as "professors" (of what, I ask?), that they only "questioned and challenged" the intelligence. Those of us in the lower ranks of American governance, the voters, believe they filtered every bit of intelligence which reached the top of our Government. Without additional information, ... and one has to ask where they would receive that information in the best restaurants in Georgetown, how could they be convinced the CIA had it wrong. And in that instance, how can they still defend George Tenet's information to our President. Was he not the Director of CIA? Were his Analysts not the best we could obtain, and were they not given the best information available to discern the intentions of our enemies? If not, why not? Can we award the Director and disdain his reports?

No, ... For in the schism between George Tenet's falling on the sword of disinformation, and Rummy's resigned corpse at the ass end of the skewer, like some Schizophrenic Schiskobab, there lie the impaled careers of our most capable intelligence officers,... some of whom we know, and most of whom we do not. As with every Schiskobab, we must look to the inside to find the best morsels. Even these devoted and invisible servants have abandoned the cause of our People in the aftermath of the War on Terror.

I believe "Disinformation" is, nonetheless information. If you are responsible for filtering, amplifying, inventing, or distorting intelligence which rises to a level in our government where it influences, or is likely to influence, the decisions made by any branch, be it the Executive, the Judicial, or the Legislative, then you should, by virtue of the authority of the role assigned and ascribed to that subordinate by the branch which appoints them, be responsible for the content of the information you report for action by your respective branch.

Just my take on it, of course. But it seems to me that Rummy, and Feith, and Wolfowitz, and Perle, should all step up and answer for their reasoning in the lead up to the War in Iraq. And to distinguish one war from the other, ... Afghanistan was, and still is, considered a legitimate war by the World, and most Americans. I feel we had no choice but to take it to the Taliban, and Osama, and those regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan that harbor terrorists of whatever stripe. We abandoned that war at the worst possible time, for reasons which remain to be explored.

The question, in the end, is whether ignorance leads wisdom down a path of perdition based on its blindness, predelection, and perfidy.

If that be the case, ... then hang the bastards, as long and high as is required to end their influence on our Nation.