The fool on the hill

Republicans turf-wrestling like infants, playing fast and loose with
national-security secrets, tripping over themselves in the
rebuilding
of Iraq?

Weren't these guys supposed to be the grownups?


From TIME, 10/11/03:

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/k...517704,00.html

Dick Cheney, Hard-Liner in Chief

Turf wars, temper tantrums, mysterious leaks--has Bush lost control
of
his own government?



George W. Bush gave yet another speech last week defending his
Administration's war in Iraq.

Actually, it was the same Old speech--the same Western
aw-shucks-isms
("We're on the hunt"), the same complexities avoided.

The President is beginning to sound pretty defensive--with good
reason: he's been playing defense since July.

As he said last week, "Wars are won on the offensive."

So are second terms.

The President's rut reflects a gathering dysfunction in his Adminis-
tration.

The White House seems paralyzed, unable to stanch the political,
diplomatic and actual bleeding over Iraq.

There are turf wars everywhere.

The CIA is at war with the White House;

the Pentagon is at war with the State Department and the National
Security Council (nsc);

some elements of the uniformed military are furious with the
civilian
leadership of the Pentagon, partly for launching the attack against
Iraq in the first place without enough allied support.

The fault lines are largely between moderate diplomatic and military
traditionalists and more aggressive neoconservatives and
nationalists.

The Administration's exposure of a covert CIA operative, Valerie
Plame, was unprecedented, but at last week's Cabinet meeting, the
President shrugged and said he didn't think the leaker would be
caught.

His apparent nonchalance is outrageous.

Plame was integral to the CIA's effort to suss out the movement of
weapons of mass destruction--ground zero in the war on terror.

As for the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld--who is beginning to resemble
Humphrey Bogart's unhinged Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny--lost
his
temper last week at the news that National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice was, finally, trying to coordinate the government's
reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

He said he hadn't been consulted in advance.

He implied that Rice's effort wasn't very important, anyway.

Rumors of a Pentagon boycott of the process began to bubble when the
political, economic and counterterrorism group meetings were either
canceled or held without civilian Pentagon participation.

An nsc source offered the plausible argument that these were just
logistical problems with a new process.

But the instantaneous rumors were typical of the Administration's
foreign-policy mess.

Republicans turf-wrestling like infants, playing fast and loose with
national-security secrets, tripping over themselves in the
rebuilding
of Iraq?

Weren't these guys supposed to be the grownups?

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 1206 +0200 (CEST), George Orwell
wrote:

Must be yakking about the democRAT party.