Posted on 12/07/2007 10:07:36 PM PST by gpapa
President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.
This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.
What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of this week's national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of "nuclear weapons program" does "not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Yep, more bureaucracy is never a good answer. And when it comes to intelligence it turns what is supposed to be sharp, insightful analysis into ‘consensus building’ for the purpose of generating reports and CYA. And ‘consensus’ is a bad thing when it comes to economic or intelligence analysis. Being right is far more important than being in a consensus.
Reagan did it by:
1. Improving military compensation as Bush has.
2. Increase military spending which Bush has done but of cours Reagan did so in peacetime while Bush natuarlly did in war time.
As for accepting a different set of enlistees for a military fighting a war than for a peacetime military, I think that only makes senses too
Could not agree more -- like the "consensus" on Gore-Bull Warming.
No doubt about it, inept and defending themselves, inept at several things...
but again, as far a history...we’re just a tad early in THAT arc as well!
I think as far as meeting the challenge of militant Islam, he gets, and will get high marks. And yes even with the Josef Goebbels lefties repeating their lies over and over.
While I agree with you about 80-percent, President Bush unfortunately has let media 'perception' color his decisions.
Such as the Valerie Plame fiasco, which NEVER ever should have been handled the way it was.
And the entire SURGE policy should have been enacted years prior, but wasn't because the Dem-controlled national media was mucking up the American psyche with bogus stories of torture and murder (Hadifa, Falujah, etc)
And I haven't even touched on the bogus 9/11 Commission with RINO political turncoats such as former NJ Gov. Tom Kean, and how they allowed all this political grandstanding with peaceniks --- yet SHUT out legitimate 9/11 victims Debra ?? Burlingame (I forget her name).
The difference between Reagan and GWB is that Reagan ignored the liberal media and did what was right -- while GWB tries to appease them -- with sometimes disasterous results.
That's a revelation -- who'd have guessed? You mean banks are where the money is?
>>The International Left has studiously ignored the Syrian nuke strike . . .
And ditto Libya’s nuclear program, which they turned over to us right after Saddam was nailed.
The program that was much more advanced than our highly-vaunted intelligence agencies (that missed the impending fall of the Soviet Union, that missed Saddam’s intentions regarding Kuwait, that missed clear signs of 9/11, etc.) thought it was.
Who's fault is that?
This is a another sign that clearly points to Bush's lack of leadership. Seems to me, we should have fired Bush.
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