The American Spectator

br> Clinton “fudged” up a lot of decisions based on “fudged” statements on intelligence, no matter what the law was. Rumsfeld’s letter, the commission stated, “However its effects are manifested, ‘fudging’ has a corrupting influence on both the policy making and the intelligence communities.”

Much was promised — by CIA Director Tenet — in response to the Intelligence Side Letter but little, as we have seen, was done to improve how intelligence was gathered, analyzed, or presented to policymakers between 1999 and 2003. The intelligence community Bush and Rumsfeld inherited in 2001 was still thoroughly “fudged” up.

One thing Rumsfeld learned in the commission’s days he tried to fix himself. Actually, both he and Vice President Cheney tried.

p>The side letter criticized severely the failure of senior policymakers to challenge the products of the intelligence community: br> /p>

Unless and until senior users [of intelligence] take time to engage analysts, question their assumptions and methods, seek from them what they know, what they don’t know and ask them their opinions — and do so without penalizing the analysts when their opinions differ from those of the user — senior users cannot have substantial impact in improving the intelligence product they receive.

br> Rumsfeld and Cheney tried to do just that in the months before the Iraq invasion. And they’ve been vilified for trying to skew the intelligence for their troubles. What they didn’t foresee was the political activism of the intelligence community when it became desperate to find a fall guy after the pre-war intelligence proved wrong.

IN MANY PAST articles I’ve labeled Rumsfeld the Big Dog in the context of a favorite saying of an Alabama gent I once knew: “If you can’t run with the Big Dog, you’d better go sit on the porch.” Rumsfeld is no longer running that path, just mapping it for those who may follow and are willing to learn.

Those of us who admire Rumsfeld for who he is and what he has done are eager to read and study the Big Dog’s map of our nation and our world.