Why did he allow Porter Goss to be hung out to dry? Goss was attempting to do just that but once a few bureaucratic feathers were ruffled Bush folded like a cheap suitcase. There's some very strange and disturbing stuff going on on the security front, with spooks operating as an opposition goverenment and defying properly elected officials. Just what the hell did Frank Church and Stansfield Turner set into motion?
I agree. The Plame affair got me thinking along these lines. I know plenty of others have commented to the same effect, but I was thinking this on my own. You know how that goes - "Yeah! That's what I was about to say!"
I've always thought that the Bush Presidency is politically weak, with these CIA issues as exhibit A. This is in stark contrast to the hysterical Dem rhetoric which paints him as a fascist dictator. What are those guys smoking? Marijuana, I guess!
Goss got screwed by Negroponte who wanted the DNI job. Bush took his usual hands-off approach and ended up losing the best CIA Chief he could have had and got himself a guy as DNI who was hated by State and had no real connections to most of the other 15 agencies.
Bush refuses to become involved in actual politics. He apparently thinks its either beneath him or its just not dignified to practice the art of politics. And while he makes himself defenseless by refusing to fight back, his enemies within our government gut him on a regular basis and put his closest friends on the chopping block (Rove, Libby, etc).
I really didn’t expect Bush would be so incredibly neutered when it came to partisanship. I guess I should have seen it coming from his days in Texas but I thought that having seen how partisanship works when his dad got eaten alive that he would be smart enough to know that if you don’t hit your enemies in the nose they will continue to put their nose in your affairs. Its probably been the biggest disappointment for me in him as a President - his unwillingness to fight anybody within the borders of the U.S. or even speak up when he or his allies are attacked (unless its the last 30 days before an election and he’s at a campaign event - that is apparently the only place he is willing to state the truth about the other side).
An excellent question- not to mention guys like Curt Weldon, and have you noticed that Duncan Hunter has had NO HELP from the Admin? Meanwhile, we all thought Rice was going to State in order to clean house, and now she's proposing insanity like a Pali state in Israel.
This group turned out to be a collection of clowns. Sad.
Extremely disturbing.
Just what the hell did Frank Church and Stansfield Turner set into motion?
I doubt we'll ever know it all.
But it's difficult to simply clean house in such an agency, especially at the field level.
But I think that Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five are probably minor compared to this.
What I mean is this isn't exactly new...