WTF is this duet? It would not even qualify for a Poli Sci 101 essay in a local community college for the Motivationally Challenged. Michael Hayden seems determined to underscore to the public that the L’esprit Bureaucratique encrusting the Community grows in new and baroque ways. Together with his turn with Timmy, what’s poor boy to do? cause in sleepy Langley town, theres just no place for a street fighting man.
MR. RUSSERT: I want to go back to ’07 when Bob Woodward wrote a piece in The Washington Post about comments you made to the Iraqi Study Group, and have a chance to talk about that regarding Iraq.
“On the morning of November 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered … in the … Roosevelt Room of the White House. CIA Director Michael Hayden … said, `the inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern seems irreversible,’ adding that he could not `point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,’ according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.
“`The government is unable to govern,’ Hayden concluded. `We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balance, and it cannot function.'”
Is that an accurate assessment of what you said?
GEN. HAYDEN: It’s an incomplete assessment of, of what I said. What, what I said was inability to govern or turn this around in the short term is, is what I precisely said. And then I, I tried to use a sports metaphor. I talked about running a marathon, and what I, what I said to the, to the group there is I’d run a marathon in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh’s pretty hilly, as you know, and at about mile 21 there’s a two-mile downhill stretch. And as you get down to the bottom of that hill, it’s only three miles to the finish and you run three miles before church on Sunday. So I knew if I got to mile 22, there was a natural break that would begin to turn things into my favor. What I was saying to the commission was, there were no longer any natural breaks lying ahead of us that would turn things in our favor. It had to be done with just slogging through hard work. There were no upcoming elections, for example, no upcoming changes in the political structure that would be natural breaks. That’s what I was trying to say to the committee.
Now his Paul McCartney-Michael Jackson duet. Perhaps next a pop-up book in time, you know, for the kids, for back to school.
Dick Helms must be rolling over in his grave.
A Random Quote says
” … a delusion, a mockery, and a
snare.”
LORD DENMAN (1779-1854)—
O’Connell and others v. the Queen
House of Lords, Sept. 4,
1844.
(NB – We think this might be the deep
origin of the Woody Allen “travesty of
a mockery of a shame …) We also
note that Fred Douglas also used this
Denman phrase, but without atribution.)
(Clark and Finnelly’s Reports
ff Cases in the House of Lords, vol.
xi, p. 351.)
” If it is possible that
such a practice as that which has
taken place in the present instance
should be allowed to pass without
a remedy (and no other remedy has
been suggested), trial by jury itself,
instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.”
Comment says
” … agents discovered that Mak was in the process of copying thousands of pages of technical documents onto computer disks, which he arranged to send to China using his brother and sister-in-law as couriers.”
Maybe his sister-in-law’s code name, Ms. Harvey Greenglass, was a tip off.
Comment says
re: ” … sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to “send agents here to steal America’s military secrets.”
—–
Leo, can you imagine the conversation back in China?
“Are you gonna send any more spies to the USA?”
“Yeah, why you ask?”
“Well, read this (he hands him a copy of the court transcript and the Wapo article”
“Oh my! The judge has issued a pretty stern warning. Hmmm”
“Yeah – let’s stop spying for a while or let’s focus on Russia
Comment says
Aside from any probs the Bureau might have – we have always been skeptical of the idea of creating some sort of MI-5 in its place – Seeing the annoying (imo – granted, unfair assessment) John Edwards give Mueller a hard time about this topic during a hearing only added to our skepticism.
Btw = we saw that move “Breach” recently – Not bad.
DrLeoStrauss says
On the other side of the coin, the Bureau really has its work cut out for it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203952.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=new
We’ve talked over at STSOZ 1.0 about the differences in intelligence collection techniques between Confucian and Western/Slavic cultures and their impact on the U.S. counter-intelligence mission. As readers know, we are often skeptical if not outright critical of the Bureau and its own culture, and its all-too predictable abuses of the Patriot Act. (Shocked ! Shocked !) Anyone who expected to create an intelligence organization out of the FBI legal tradition (and incentive program) by grafting a few high profile executives from other intelligence agencies would have to be as stupid as, well, a congressman or senator.
But the CI mission has always remained distinct in the Stiftung’s mind, not the least is its mismatch of resources to challenges. At least we hope Mueller is not reduced to assigning a GS-8 to ghost write such a cloying item per above. But just the tip. As we’ve said before, when a (temporary) Superpower goes rogue, what else can one expect? Still, one must try to man the dike, no matter the lunatics at the controls.
Anon says
Klein says Kagans are warped. Kagans smile, move on …
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/04/too_many_kagans_too_little_kno.html
Anon says
Meant to say there was nothing secret-worthy. Obviously they were secret. But why?
Anon says
It is sort of bizarre, if unsurprising, that those Yoo memos were classified. There was zero reason to classify them in the sense that there was nothing really secret in them. It was entirely political = and deceptive. The classified status helped create the aura of plausible deniablity. That’s pretty much it. Baby faced Yoo will probably recover over time – He must know that there really is no accountability.
Anon says
Here’s a small example of TNR naivte – The whole culture in 90s DC of those who pretended to care about Bosnia ‘genocide’ is highly suspect, imo.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/04/01/the-hillary-bosnia-mystery-cont-d.aspx
Anon says
A while back – we posited the idea that ‘the Surge’ was really an Op aimed at the American people – Now Commentary is basically saying the same thing – in different words. Kicking the can down the road – it’s an attempt to create some of those marathon milestones our Gen Hayden relies on.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/Anatomy-of-the-Surge-11265
Comment says
The New Republic is sometimes earnestly dumb for an intellectual magazine – They always have these posts online commenting about what Karl Rove’s latest thought or soundbit is. The pretense is that they should try to learn from their (overrated, imo) enemies etc. But it never seems to occur to them that Rove is not some retired disinterested observer — that he may not be telling the truth or expression false opinions. It really never crosses their mind. Maybe they really did believe in wmd tales.
Comment says
Didn’t William Harvey run the Miami 5K?