has a good piece<\/a>\u00a0on the bad CIA (“worse than useless”). Surely our various intelligence organizations are practicing a sort of subversion, whether due to a condescending animus toward George Bush, or to a more generic arrogance that their genius is not appreciated and so they leak and back stab against their betters to ensure someone out there knows just how brilliant they really are.<\/p>\nThey remind one of the smug undergraduate English major who serially declares that he is too creative and brilliant ever to go on to graduate school \u2014 and then lets you know it for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
We see a disturbing cynicism and disrespect for protocol almost everywhere. The freelancing and soon to be leaking Joe Wilson off to Niger on the recommendation of his ‘nonpartisan’ and ‘undercover’ wife, then the various memoirs of a Scheuer (with the charade of “anonymous”) or a get-even ‘slam-dunk’ Tenet (add in the novelist Richard Clark) \u2014 and then the latest\u00a0Time<\/em>essay by Joe Klein, sort of trumpeting the new transparency of an agency at odds with the administration, spiced up with very non-transparent anonymous quotes from the usual “senior intelligence official” who offers behind-the-scenes, real-deal take to get the always brilliant point across.<\/p>\nWe are a long way from the old idea that operatives were loyal to their craft, did not leak to anyone, did not try to embarrass elected officials by “background” and anonymous spin, and argued for their dissident views behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
The irony is that they could endure the old stereotyped slur that they went to excess in the Cold War to ensure the supremacy of the U.S., but they won’t long live down the public’s current impressions that our intelligence agencies are whiny, incompetent, subversive, and partisan.<\/p>\n
The emperor has no clothes, and the public doesn’t want to pay billions to the CIA and others only to be told that in 2005 we had an existential threat of a nuclear Iran, then two years later we did not, and all due to mysterious unnamed “diplomatic” pressures at work in 2003 (oddly not long after the unmentioned removal of Saddam) \u2014 this from ying-yang agencies that now miss the real threat (cf. the Pakistani bomb) and then in a panic hype the nonexistent one (arsenals of Iraqi WMD).<\/p>\n
I just wish I knew what cycle they were in at the moment, since the hour may be getting late.<\/p>\n
P.S. And perhaps the report might have speculated why an Iran, awash in oil and natural gas, spending billions on a reactor while it imposes gas rationing on its citizenry, is enriching uranium at breakneck speed \u2014 and serially lying about its progress to international agencies. Or alternatively, is there much of a threat of terrorist organizations now in Iran being given radioactive materials for various missions against Tehran’s enemies?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Christopher Hitchens\u00a0has a good piece\u00a0on the bad CIA (“worse than useless”). Surely our various intelligence organizations are practicing a sort of subversion, whether due to a condescending animus toward George Bush, or to a more generic arrogance that their genius is not appreciated and so they leak and back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[746],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-U0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11824,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/chinas-brilliant-insidious-strategy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3472,"position":0},"title":"China\u2019s Brilliant, Insidious Strategy","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The Chinese Communist government does not have so much a strategy to translate its economic ascendance into global hegemony as several strategies. All of them are brilliantly insidious. On matters of trade, China is always flexible in responding to critics of its asymmetrical, 30-year\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9404,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/douglas-macarthurs-brilliant-controversial-legacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3472,"position":1},"title":"Douglas MacArthur\u2019s Brilliant, Controversial Legacy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A new biography examines the many sides of the versatile American general. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Of all the great American captains of World War II, none remains more controversial than General Douglas MacArthur, whose genius and folly have taken on mythic proportions. 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But today\u2019s column was absolutely brilliant Nice job Mike Benbrook Oakhurst CA \u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013 Dear Reforming Angry Reader Mike Benbrook, Vomiting is not healthy. If I were to do so each\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6531,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-9-a-facebook-comment\/","url_meta":{"origin":3472,"position":3},"title":"Angry Reader #9 — A Facebook Comment","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I will concede that you are almost always right (no joke). 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