Posted on 12/05/2004 12:42:16 PM PST by nj26
Congress's chief opponent of legislation to revamp the intelligence community says he remains unmoved, leaving the White House scrambling this weekend for a solution to the impasse that has frustrated the bill's backers and raised questions about President Bush's clout among Republican lawmakers.
For Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the House Armed Services Committee chairman at the center of the logjam, the role is a familiar one. During 24 years in Congress, he has bucked Democratic as well as Republican presidents when he felt they provided too little money, equipment and weaponry for U.S. troops. When it comes to safeguarding satellite intelligence for troops in Iraq -- the issue that prompted him to waylay the White House-backed bill last month -- he has an unusually personal interest.
Hunter's son, a Marine lieutenant who has served two tours in Iraq, phoned him from embattled Fallujah and "told me to hang in there on the intel thing," the congressman said in an interview late last week. "A lot of military people have told me that," he added, but his accounts of his son, Duncan Duane Hunter, have proved especially moving to his House colleagues, several said.
Hunter has raised two main objections to the legislation that emerged from House-Senate negotiations: It would give the Pentagon insufficient budgetary control over intelligence operations and would make it possible for a director of national intelligence to override Pentagon efforts to deliver information from spy satellites immediately to troops at war. Hunter said in the interview that the budget issue had been resolved, but not the other.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Then get him out of Congress and into a governorship. There is an ancient curse upon legislators running for the presidency.
Bush should be on notice that it is likely to be a LONG four years if Bush doesn't get off the open borders bandwagon.
While the idea of consolidation and placing central control in one person seems like a good idea, in the long run it makes me very nervous, like nurturing a potential Lavrenti Beria. The problem with concentrating so much power in one person's hands is that for good or ill that person most definitely will use that power. And, at some future time they may very well become a little bit confused as to what the national interest really is. Congress may want one person they think they can hold responsible for intelligence matters, but they may get someone like J. Edgar Hoover who learned how to do some controlling of his own.
"The problem with concentrating so much power in one person's hands is that for good or ill that person most definitely will use that power."
I always apply the "Hillary test" whenever I consider an expansion or concentration of governmental power. How would I feel if Hillary had that power at her disposal?
This guy, Duncan Hunter, is my Congress person. He is just the greatest.
It was Duncan Hunter that lobbied the Navy into berthing the USS Ronald Reagan in her home port of San Diego - where Duncan ably represents us.
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