Posted on 12/10/2007 2:21:30 PM PST by neverdem
It seems flabbergastingly improbable that President George W. Bush learned of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iranian nuclear ambitions only a few days before the rest of us did, but the haplessness of his demeanor suggested that he might, in fact, have been telling the truth. After all, had the administration known for any appreciable length of time that the mullahs had hit the pause button on their program in late 2003, it would have been in a position to make a claim that is quite probably true, namely, that our overthrow of Saddam Hussein had impressed the Iranians in much the same way as it impressed the Libyans and made them at least reconsider their willingness to continue flouting the Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Given that the examination of the immense Libyan stockpile also disclosed the fingerprints that led back to the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuke-mart in Pakistan, the removal of Saddam from the chessboard has had more effect in curbing the outlaw WMD business than it is normally given credit for.)
Nobody seems entirely sure what caused our intelligence agencies to reverse their opinion, but it seems rather likely that the defection and/or abduction of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, Iran's former deputy minister of defense, in February of this year, has something to do with it. Asgari's ostensibly principal job had been that of liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but his debriefing could also have helped confirm pre-existing surmises about Iran's reining-in of its nuclear ambitions.
Which is the most that can be said about those ambitions. It is completely false for anybody to claim, on the basis of this admitted "estimate," that Iran has ceased to be a candidate member of the fatuously named nuclear "club." It has the desire to acquire the weaponry, it retains...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
More like protecting the Saudis.
Hitchens should go home.
I think we should abolish the CIA because they are DemonRat shills and are totally incompetent, not to mention treasonous.
Treason is a crime against country providing aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.
How does THIS amount to treason?
let me get this straight...Dhimmicrats are accusing WHO of treason? Let’s start with the Clintons, then Murtha, then Pilosi, then Reid...et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps the dhimmis might try asking the military who they think the traiters are. What gall!
Bring back the OSS. I heard Julia Child dispatched NAZIS with a newspaper rolled to a sharp point under the chin.
There would be a lot of free agents with deep secrets who’d be free to work for Hamas, N.Korea, China, Russia, et al.
Not that they aren’t ALREADY serving their foreign masters (a Hamas agent was recently uncovered).
These people are dolts, igits, idiots. Whatever you want to call them.
trea·son
noun
1. the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.
3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
trea·son
n.
1. Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
2. A betrayal of trust or confidence.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
treason
noun
1. a crime that undermines the offender’s government
2. disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior
3. an act of deliberate betrayal [syn: treachery]
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
trea·son
noun
Etymology: Anglo-French treison crime of violence against a person to whom allegiance is owed, literally, betrayal, from Old French traïson, from traïr to betray, from Latin tradere to hand over, surrender
: the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one’s country or of assisting its enemies in war; specifically : the act of levying war against the United States or adhering to or giving aid and comfort to its enemies by one who owes it allegiance trea·son·ous /-&s/ adjective
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
And from the Constitution:
Article III
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
and some cases:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article03/24.html
Better to destroy those tapes than let them fall into the hands of democrats, who will be eager to share them with our enemies, in hopes that, in the future, those enemies will be able to learn from them and be able, then, to frustrate such interrogation techniques. Once again, democrats standing down for America.
Didn’t Clinton and Algore destroy emails and White House correspondence?
I don’t know about that, but I just googled it and found that Julia Child was indeed in the OSS:
“Decades before becoming a famous chef, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services. (The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA.) She was assigned to solve a problem for U.S. naval forces during World War II: Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting them off and warning the German U-boats they were intended to sink.
“So... Julia Child and a few of her male compatriots got together and literally cooked up a shark repellent,” that was used to coat the explosives, McCarthy says.
Those were the days.
“Hitchens should go home.”
He is home. I believe he is a naturalized American citizen.
Civil Service code will just see all of them employed at another government agency, in a equivalent grade (pay), and (ideally, according ti the law) as close as possible to their old job description.
Just rearranging the deck chairs after you hit the ice berg.
I’d agree to start over with the CIA. It’s a ‘rat’s nest in general.
As far as I know there is no law requiring interrogations to be recorded. There should also be no law requiring the retention of such recordings. I think the problem for the CIA may lie in that the existence of the tapes were known to certain members of Congress and the 9/11 Commission and that the tapes had been requested but never produced.
I can't speak for the Hitch. IMHO, it's more like this is the last straw. They are worse than useless.
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