Comments on: Barack Obama’s Dangerous Game

By: zuiko

zuiko — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:17:30 +0000

They seem to have plenty of people working for them that have no problem calling up the NYT and dishing out the classified info so long as it makes the CIA come out looking better than the administration. If it hurts the country, that’s just acceptable collateral damage. The real enemy in all this is the Bush administration, anyway, not the terrorists. They aren’t going to get any kudos from me for allowing that kind of thing to happen and continue to happen.

9/11 was an massive intelligence failure and there have been many since 9/11. Things have been hardly “incident free” since 9/11 either. I guess you have to murder at least 3,000 Americans on US soil for it to count as an incident in most people’s books, but there have been major terrorist attacks around the world against our allies and interests. There have even been terrorist attacks on US soil (anthrax anyone?) that have gone unsolved and unanswered. There have been plenty of small scale attacks in the US by people who just happen to be Muslims that attended radical mosques, but that is all just coincidental if you believe our homeland security apparatus. No terrorism to see here.

CIA is a problem and has been a problem for a while now… if you don’t see that, well I can’t help you there.

By: kayfromcarroll

kayfromcarroll — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:12:29 +0000

that you so colorfully describe as our national security. There are so many things involved that you don’t know. The caretakers of “that steaming pile” have allowed us to live incident-free in the United States for the last 7 years.

Let’s see how long we have to wait for an attack on our soil under the Obama/Panetta CIA? If we go longer than 7 years, I will eat my words.

You know through the MSM of approximately 8-10 foiled attempts at bombings in our country. I don’t want to know how many others have been kept under wraps due to national security concerns. I think it would stagger many of us to know the number.

Just Sayin’

By: zuiko

zuiko — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:56:03 +0000

I think a lot of his nominees are worse than this one… not the least of which would be Holder. So if we are going to concentrate our fire, I’d rather do it on Holder than Panetta. There’s a heck of a lot more ammo to use against Holder as well.

By: Finrod

Finrod — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:43:39 +0000

Some will take not being outraged at everything and turn it into not being outraged at anything. To my mind, picking one of Obama’s appointees and raising #3|| about it isn’t being outraged at everything, and I can’t think of an appointee so far of Obama’s that’s stood up that’s worse than this one is.

So why don’t we concentrate our early fire on this one?

By: icbm

icbm — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:07:57 +0000

i was speaking generally without thinking of the particular issue at hand

zuiko’s realistic viewpoint below is a good one, though, i think

By: icbm

icbm — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:07:57 +0000

i was speaking generally without thinking of the particular issue at hand

zuiko’s realistic viewpoint below is a good one, though, i think

By: icbm

icbm — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:04:15 +0000

logically, that sounds right, and, given your experience working with the government, i trust you

By: zuiko

zuiko — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:30:13 +0000

Than any of the other caretakers of that steaming pile have done for the past decade (and longer), I might have reason to be concerned. The fact that I don’t makes this a little thing. The fact that Obama isn’t going to nominate someone better and will likely find someone much worse to nominate makes this a *very* little thing.

By: Achance

Achance — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:27:12 +0000

If I ever decided to go back to full time work for a government, being COS to a Republican taking over from a Democrat would be the gig I’d want. It would be a lot of fun to make smoke and noise, break things, and fire people. Then you redraw the org chart with a machine gun and make it into an organization that a Republican can actually staff.

Democrat designed government organizations, and most of them are, have a bazillion appointee level supervisors and managers A Republican couldn’t find enough loyal, competent Republcans to staff one if his/her life depended on it. So, they leave holdover Democrats in and wonder why they get leaked, thwarted, and sabotaged to death.

By: zuiko

zuiko — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:26:21 +0000

Just as attention was limited for (and squandered by) the boy who cried wolf, our resources (attention, time, cooperation from RINOs) are similarly limited. We can be outraged at everything Obama does for the next 4 years and scream at the top of our lungs, but people will catch on and stop paying attention to us almost immediately.

Now if we had the MSM on our side, maybe we could get that game to work, by having them help us out by validating our shrill proclamations on anything and everything Obama does. When you have the MSM working against you there is no way constant outrage is going to work.

By: Neil Stevens

Neil Stevens — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:18:59 +0000

By: Neil Stevens

Neil Stevens — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:18:44 +0000

We can hit everything at once. We’re a big community.

So I still don’t see it, I guess.

By: Achance

Achance — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:17:59 +0000

from being a member of a work unit to being the supervisor of that work unit. It is a real problem with government because the career path is so commonly something like: Widgetmaker I-III, Widgetmaking Supervisor, Regional Director of Widgetmaking, Director of Widgetmaking, and sometimes even to Secretary of Widgetmaking, though that isn’t common since Secretaries are usually chosen either because they’re famous or because they raised a lot of money.

By: zuiko

zuiko — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:11:27 +0000

If we concentrate our fire where it matters. As opposed to spreading out all the outrage everywhere and not winning on anything. I would suggest Holder would be a much better place to do that than say, Panetta. Or the $1T+ “stimulus” package.

There are bigger fish to fry than a guy who will probably run the CIA about as well as any recent DCI has (not much in the way of competition there). He might even surpass a guy like Tenet… not that that would be much of a trick, either.

By: icbm

icbm — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:11:18 +0000

will not help us. Obama is not Bush; we can expect Obama not to give as much in response, so we should harbor our energies for major concerted pushes on the most important issues to bring maximum pressure to bear.

By: icbm

icbm — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:08:52 +0000

And I think that Ledeen’s point is partly that an outsider is better able to do that sort of thing than an insider, who would have to break many personal and professional relationships to do it.

By: Finrod

Finrod — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:06:13 +0000

By: izoneguy

izoneguy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:01:18 +0000

even if 100,000 or 1,000,000 die.
Hitler killed over 6,000,000 Jews and
the left are up in arms because the
Jews are defending themselves.

It is truly us against them.

By: phxg

phxg — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:59:26 +0000

But if a president enacts policies that increase the number of Americans’ deaths then he is responsible for endangering those people needlessly placing the “fair treatment” of our enemies above the lives of our operatives.

By: Achance

Achance — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:56:16 +0000

on the first day I’d call in all the management down to the highest level of career employees and have a “come to Jesus” talk with them. My basic premise would be that if I or the Administration has any problem with or because of the Agency, I have a problem with whatever line of supervision it occurs in and I will make their misery my mission. Then, as quickly as I could find an excuse, I’d fire some people very noisily. That ought to give pretty good morale for a while in the sense that they’d keep quiet as they plotted against you. Then you’d just have to hope that your subordinate managers were more afraid of you than of the staff and would rat off the plotters, leakers, or whatever. Then, unlike stupid Republicans, you very publicly fire and if possible prosecute them. You won’t have to do it again.