The American Spectator

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(Page 3 of 17)

br> Seabrook, Texas /p>

Mr. Babbin is too kind. It is very definitely already too late to save CIA. The agency ought to be treated like the brain tumor it has become. Inoperable, perhaps, but surely the thing's blood supply can be routed around it, with the budgetary equivalent of grafts, to new and healthy organs. Bypass surgery. Since we cannot, I'm told, fire the mandarins, let's at least not feed them new acolytes. Let CIA die a natural death, out to pasture and counting clover.

DoD is doing what it has to do to prosecute the war, but let's not get comfortable with a Defense monopoly on the serious work of intelligence. Our military is wise and good, but its perspective is, necessarily and peculiarly, military. Competition is a good thing for intel as for nearly everything else - there's some blessing here from the inter-service rivalry within the Pentagon, but a vital civilian intelligence service, one that is actually on our side, is essential.

p>After all, we are not Spartans. br> -- Paul Kotik br> Plantation, Florida /p>

Sadly for this country, your article and analysis is right on target. Since 9/11, we have watched as our government created new layers of bureaucracy to "enhance our security." We have the new Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Both these new creations have done nothing more than create new bureaucracies where finger pointing and a new circle of blame ensures that, if something really bad happens, no individual or agency will ever really be found responsible.

Net result: This is a country which won't even protect its own borders, can't spy on its enemies, and can't rebuild the World Trade Center in less than a generation. The transcontinental railroad was built in less than three years, and the Empire State Building in a little over a year.

The military gets criticized for holding enemies of the country in a POW facility in another country, according them full Geneva Convention rights, instead of shooting them as out of uniform partisans, as allowed under the convention. Now, Bush wants to be rid of Guantanamo, thinking it is causing a problem. He has been reluctant to initiate trials by military tribunal, with the guilty being swiftly executed.

When will this country get the leadership it needs to defend itself? Will it ever? Are such leaders willing to step forward? Would the country elect them if they did step forward?

Those in power in Washington are not serious about protecting the country. Furthermore, it's not going to happen in my lifetime. Our leaders are calculating, politically correct cowards, when brave men are needed. If this country had such politically correct leaders in 1776, the country would have never been born.

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