Posted on 01/19/2005 8:11:40 PM PST by quidnunc
-snip-
The story is going around Washington that Senate Foreign Relations chairman Richard Lugar handed Condoleezza Rice a list of names of “neocons” he wanted blacklisted from the Department of State — and that Rice assented. If the story is true, you can see how it might signal unscrupulous present and former CIA officials to go even further — even to the extent of jeopardizing secret missions.
In the first term, administration policymakers again and again failed to agree on a coherent policy, failed to explain that policy to the public, and failed to impose it on the bureaucracy. Disunity at the top invites selective disloyalty below. And disloyalty below has emerged as one of the gravest threats to the nation’s security.
The fact is that considerable elements of the national security apparatus have gone into open mutiny against this war. If the only way to stop it is to drive the country to defeat, then they will welcome — and indeed hasten — that defeat. If the administration is to save the situation, it must begin by taking sabotage of the war effort at least half as seriously as it takes indiscretion at the Department of Health and Human Services. The saboteurs do not believe that the administration will take serious action against them. It’s long past time to correct that misapprehension.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Writing in his Diary at NRO, David Frum reports:
"The story is going around Washington that Senate Foreign Relations chairman Richard Lugar handed Condoleezza Rice a list of names of 'neocons' he wanted blacklisted from the Department of State and that Rice assented. If the story is true, you can see how it might signal unscrupulous present and former CIA officials to go even further- even to the extent of jeopardizing secret missions."
What Frum is referring to in the second passage is the willingness of anti-Bush officials in the USG to leak secret or classified material--in this case about alleged covert ops in Iran to Sy Hersh of the New Yorker--because these officials view the material as more evidence of a "neocon" project. Thus, since everyone knows that the "neocon" projects are leading the nation to ruin, leaking them is truly in the US' best interests and not, say, a crime involving giving away vital national security secrets of the United States that could kill agents or soldiers in the field.
We have no idea if Lugar's list is real or not, though it must be said that is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a second-rate Senator like Lugar. Lugar's main accomplishment in the Senate is to have long since set the record for grinning like an idiot on the Sunday news programs while his "good friend," the Democratic senator from wherever is charging Republicans with murdering poor children, abetting racist lynchings and poisoning suburban water reservoirs.
The whole "neocon" incident did distress us for a moment since we had always assumed the American left was American enough to be immune to the kind of ultra-irrational anti-semitism found in Europe and the U.K. But, sure enough, the American Left, like the sad shell of what was once the British Broadcasting Corporation, began to use code words like "Wolfowitz" and "Perle" and to whisper about the "Israeli Lobby's" influence on the foreign policy of the United States. In its infantile manifestations the anti-Semitic left sounded like cartoon versions of the Arab News; in it's worst, more like Der Sturmer.
Leave it to a Republican senator to carry water for these idiots.
(NewSisyphus in NewSisyphus, January 19, 2005)
http://newsisyphus.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_newsisyphus_archive.html
Keep an eye on this.
WTF
That changed during hillary's presidency --- they had every right to hire their own travel agents and nobody would have questioned it - but she HAD to destroy the ones that were there instead --- that is the lawyers & activist judges method of choice - DESTROY.
There's nuts in D.C.
Remember how some tried to pin Michael Ladeen for planting "obviously fake" Bush NG records?
Current ones? You got me.
Past ones? Jesse Helms has to be at the top of that list.
Sure,......what else is 'good' news at 'state'.....?
(The 'EU' first and Always?)
No to change the subject here, but the only way to break the power hold of these pompous bloviating egocentric senators is to institute tax reform and term limits.
4 terms in the senate, 6 in the house, is enough to make a difference.
I know we would lose some good guys...but overall I still think its worth it.
The state department is LONG overdue for a purge.
Too many USSR leftovers.
He's a little hysterical. What war? Iraq? I've seen nothing to that effect, though there may be some turf battles.
What a perfect description of Lugar. He seemed more concerned about setting up the lunch hour than the actual hearing. I half expected him to say that his wife had prepared open face tuna melts and lemon pudding for his good friends. But this article makes him far more sinister than a grinning idiot.
...............to include the 'INS'......and 'FDA'........?
I would suspect this story is garbage. Lugar is much too wishy-washy to take a stand against 'neocons'. I used to like him somewhat but he changed after his run for president was interrupted by the Oklahoma City bombing.
Any thoughts on this?
A blacklist!!! Whoever wrote it got some explaining to do. I personally doubt this list exists.
Until a Congressman or Senator has a good working knowledge of the maze that is Washington politics (at least two years), he must rely upon his staff to guide him. Many staffers just stay in place if their guy loses and take their contacts and influence to the highest bidder.
How would you term limit the unelected elite who control everything in Washington?
Read "The Diplomad" among other fine new web-blogs by Foreign Service personnel.... And you will see how some of US feel:)
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