Intelligent Intelligence Policy

Terrorism 3 Comments

David Frum asks some obvious questions about intelligence “failures”;

I’m beginning to think that maybe the weakest link in America�s intelligence system isn’t the spooks who generate the intelligence. The weakest link may be the users, the policymakers. But then, the users, the policymakers are ultimately elected. So maybe the problem is us.
That’s the question that keeps hitting me as I read and reread the 9/11 report this summer. Yes, it tells of many disturbing intelligence failures. But even more disturbing are the intelligence successes – the many times that Osama bin Laden was within reach in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 and yet still nothing was done.
Why not? Well ultimately because decision-makers flinched from the consequences of making a mistake. They feared alienating world opinion and offending and upsetting the voters. In other words – they didn’t act because they weren’t sure that the public wanted them to act.

I would point out that this is what divides politicians from statesman.
Policy makers who place public opinion above national security don’t deserve much sympathy for their errors – they have lost track of their priorities. When national security is at stake, priority number one is not re-election, no matter how you want to fold and tweak the rationale.
But I also agree with Frum about the responsibility of both the public and the media to grow up and behave like thinking adults.

We’re not going to get an intelligence service that takes risks until its leaders know that the public will accept that risks sometimes go wrong, sometimes badly wrong. Accepts – and forgives.
Any sign of that? Not much, not in the current media environment anyway. The current environment accepts bold risky intelligence strategies that succeed – while reserving the right to brutally condemn those that fail. Not exactly a good formula for curing gun-shyness.

That’s because the media has also found ways to rationalize their behavior in placing election of their favoured ideological sons over the security of nations and their citizenry.

Auditor Bites Brison

Insufferable Twits No Comments
Public Works Minister Scott Brison:
“As you can well imagine, procurement of this magnitude poses huge challenges as to the best approach to take. In this case, we used the yardstick of selecting the bidder who provided the lowest price consistent with fully meeting all technical requirements. I am pleased to say that officials of the Auditor General have commented favourably on our use of this approach.”		 Office of Auditor General;
It is impossible to say whether the lowest-cost compliant approach is bad or good, Ms. Hebert said. “Under some conditions, this approach is fair and it’s good and it leads to good value. In this case did it? We have not done an audit.”

Via The Monger.

Hippie Priest

Political Animal No Comments

Bush critic Chris Suellentrop ;

After last week’s Democratic convention, I felt that John Kerry had become the favorite in the presidential race. Now, after only two days with President Bush, I’m not so sure. He’s that good. Unlike many people, I’m not threatened by the president’s religious rhetoric. It must be the Midwestern Catholic in me. Like the people in the audience, I find it familiar and comforting. I can see why so many people believe the president is “one of us,” no matter how rich or how elite his background. And I can see that Kerry will have a tough time besting Bush in all three debates.

Via Occam’s Toothbrush

That Cloud On The Horizon

Gopher News 1 Comment

… is a herd of millions of growing spring calves with nowhere to go.
While BSE has slipped from the news cycle in urban areas, the border to the US remains closed to Canadian cattle because of a single case of BSE diagnosed a year and a half ago. A crop of new feeder calves will be heading into a winter with few buyers – there isn’t enough capacity in the Canadian meatpacking industry to process them – much less the cull cattle, which are now virtually worthless.
Nothing is going to change until after the US election cycle – in a close race, nobody is going to rock any boats unneccessarily. If Bush is defeated, don’t look for it to open after the elections either – Kerry’s a “country-of-origin labelling” (translation: clueless about the intricacy of the food industry) protectionist and proud of it.
Yet on the retail front, the prices of beef remain nearly as high as they were before the crisis. While I don’t begrudge the meatpackers and retailers the opportunity to make lemonade out of someone else’s discarded lemons, it isn’t helping to encourage consumption. Margins have always been slim in the cattle industry – and even worthless cattle have to be fed. Something’s going to give. A massive cull is being proposed.
Tomorrow another online petition to open the border comes online. I’m not very optimistic about these campaigns, but if you want to sign on, here’s the link – Opentheborder.com
Can’t hurt, anyway.
(link tip – Charles McDonald, who always has useful observations and good catches, and who should consider starting his own blog.)

Statement Of Claim

Political Animal 3 Comments

Gadhafi writes another check.

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s effort to rebuild relations with the West.
The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Not as satisfying as chasing the little dictator into a hole in the ground… but progress, nonetheless. Now, would someone please start the ball rolling on Yassar Arafat?

“Unwarrantable Self-Abasement” – An Antidote

Blogging 2 Comments

Ghost Of A Flea offers this worthy quote to highlight this week’s Winston Review;

“The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians … Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.”
— Winston Churchill, April 24, 1933

Go read the collection.

Lively Transcript

Media 4 Comments

For fans of Bill O’Reilly and Paul Krugman.

Mr. O’REILLY: …I’m appointing Russert as president of the United States right now, OK? I talked to Tommy Franks the other night, and I said, ‘You know, what’s this weapons of mass destruction deal?’ And he was the general that commanded the war. He said, ‘Before we went to war, Egypt and Jordan told me,’ Tommy Franks, all right, ‘that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I passed that along to President Bush.’ So you’re sitting there in the White House, Russert, OK–frightening thought, but you are–and you’re getting your top general going, ‘I just heard from Egypt and Jordan weapons of mass destruction are there.’ Blair’s telling you, ‘MI6–weapons of mass destruction.’ Putin’s telling you, ‘Russian intelligence–weapons of mass destruction.’ Your own CIA chief is telling you, ‘Slam dunk weapons of mass destruction,’ according to Woodward. Now the 9-11 Commission harshly criticized Clinton and Bush for not doing enough to get bin Laden. That was one of their main thesis, and I believe that and I think everybody does. So you’re told by Jordan, Egypt, Russia, Britain, your own guy, ‘Weapons of mass destruction.’ You know Zarqawi, a top al-Qaida lieutenant’s, sitting in Baghdad because he just had a leg operation, all right? You know that. You know, as the 9-11 Commission pointed out, there’s been repeated contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam. You know all this. And you don’t move against Saddam? So they did have the WMDs. Say there was an anthrax attack on Krugman’s apartment block, OK? You’re sitting there, you had all this information, you didn’t act. Impeachable offense. He had to act. That’s the truth.
Prof. KRUGMAN: No, the truth–look, you’re talking all about commissions and governments that were under political pressure, and we have some independent stuff, right? The best reporting was actually by Knight Ridder, which was talking to the analysts off the record and not to the top officials. And this is the fall of 2002. And all the analysts said, ‘You know, they’re exaggerating this threat. We’re under enormous pressure to go and find reasons to attack Iraq.’ And you’ve actually got people who are close to the administration, like, you know, editorialists at The Washington Post, Jim Hoagland saying– boasting about how we’re managing to put the screws on these CIA analysts who don’t want to believe that Saddam is such a threat. So, come on, this is rewriting history. And the fact of the matter, as…
Mr. O’REILLY: Like I’m going to believe a Washington Post editorial writer over all the people I’ve cited.
[…]
Mr. O’REILLY: Why doesn’t your newspaper, The New York Times, do some investigating? You did 48 Abu Ghraib front-page stories…
Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh…
Mr. O’REILLY: …but you haven’t been able to do any oil for food investigations. I wonder why.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Because nobody has any information, right?
Mr. O’REILLY: Nobody has any?
Prof. KRUGMAN: Nobody has anything except these claims of all this come from Ahmad Chalabi, who The New York Times has learned a little bit to be wary of.
Mr. O’REILLY: Well, maybe you assign a couple of reporters to do that, you know. I mean, Abu Ghraib, I think we got the story there.
Prof. KRUGMAN: No, we didn’t.
Mr. O’REILLY: Oh, we didn’t? Forty-eight front-page stories, we still don’t have it?
Prof. KRUGMAN: We didn’t. No. Read the appendices. Read the appendices to the Taguba report. There’s much, much worse than anything that most of the public has heard about yet.
Mr. O’REILLY: All right. Well, maybe it’s right. And if there is, I want to read about it.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah. Well…
Mr. O’REILLY: And I know I will in your paper. But I ain’t gonna read oil for food investigation there.
Prof. KRUGMAN: But let me just come back. The…
RUSSERT: Bill, why are you suggesting The New York Times won’t be aggressive in pursuing oil for food?
Mr. O’REILLY: Because they use stories to bludgeon the Bush administration. They use their front page–here’s the deal.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh God.
Mr. O’REILLY: Abu Ghraib, horrible story, awful, OK. Off-the-chart bad. Twenty-eight front-page stories in the Chicago Trib, no bastion of conservatism. Forty-eight front-page stories, all of the last 20 just repetitive, what we already knew, in The New York Times.
Prof. KRUGMAN: So you…
Mr. O’REILLY: They use that story to drive public opinion against the present administration, which the paper despises, and that’s the fact.

Heh.
The National Debate has more.

Flight 51

Terrorism 7 Comments

Reader Charles MacDonald; “It’s now 30 years since the Syrians shot down flight 51 with the loss of all aboard:”

On Aug. 9, 1974, UN Flight 51 was flying from Beirut to Damascus on a routine supply run for Canadian peacekeepers manning the Golan Heights. The outcome was anything but routine.
Aboard the Buffalo aircraft were five crew and four passengers: Mirau, a native of Swift Current, Sask.; Capt. George Foster, 44, of Calgary; Master Cpl. Ronald Spencer, 29, of Quebec; Cpl. Bruce Stringer, 23, of Kitchener, Ont.; Capt. Robert Wicks, 39, of London, Ont.; Cpl. Morris Kennington, 30, of Britain; Cpl. Michael Simpson, 26; Master Warrant Officer Gaston Landry, 35, of St-Francois d’Assise, Que., and Warrant Officer Cyril Korejwo, 47.
The flight was cleared by air traffic control in Damascus to descend for landing.
“Just as they were letting down, the Syrian surface-to-air missile battery along the highway opened up with one missile,” said Roger Landry. “The pilot managed to avoid that first missile.”
But the pilot — it’s unclear whether Mirau or Foster was actually flying the plane — couldn’t avoid a second missile. It took out the left engine.
A third went through the fuselage. Everyone on board was killed — the largest single-day loss of life in Canada’s peacekeeping history. The time was 11:50 a.m.
Landry was allowed into the crash site a day later. The Syrian army had cleaned up most of the evidence, but he did find electrical wiring with Russian writing on it — from the missiles’ firing systems.

Today is the 30th Anniversary of the loss. And Charles is right – don’t look for our UN Peacekeeper lovin’ media to notice.

CASCAR

More Money Than Brains No Comments

Spent the evening out at Bridge City Speedway’s half mile stock racing track. It was more fun than I expected. And clean – very few cautions, despite some pretty agrressive racing all night. Lots of bumping and a few spinouts, but most emerged relatively unscathed.
3.jpg
The Auto Clearing Chrysler Superstore 150 feature race (300 laps) had the top three fractions of a second apart at the finish.
winners.jpg
The winner (far right) was a local driver, Chris Shirley.
Indeed, only one bad bump all night. A little slide in reverse along the retaining wall during the Streetstocks didn’t do the rear tire and axle on Craig Katelnikoff’s car much good….
ouch.jpg
More photos in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

“All Guilty, Your Honour”

Roadkill 2 Comments

Circular firing squad, Nigerian style.

The group is believed to practice a ritual in which parties involved in a personal dispute – often over business deals – are made to drink a potion they are told will kill only the guilty one.
Police discovered “well over 50 bodies” and were searching for more, the police spokesman said. Some of the bodies were in caskets and others were headless.

Survivors get a free lottery ticket.

Swift Boat Vets Fire Back

Radioactive 3 Comments

Glenn Reynolds highlights this Kerry memory hiccup.

The Swift Boat Vets:

In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec – – easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213- 219. Sa Dec is hardly “close” to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with “visions of sugar plums” dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR’s) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

These guys aren’t caving to the threats of suit from the Kerry campaign – read the rest at the Captain’s Quarters.
Powerline Blog highlights another much-discussed problem with Kerry’s story;

Richard Nixon was not the President in December 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. It is simply incredible to me that for many years, reporters have mindlessly repeated this obviously false story without, apparently, noticing that it couldn’t possibly be true.

And these observations as well:

The facts that the Swift Vets are prepared to prove are nuclear, far worse than one would assume from reading general newspaper coverage of the controversy. It is not enough to say that the Vets’ evidence shows Kerry to be a liar. That is an understatement. In my opinion, they show Kerry to be a sick, deeply delusional man whose tenuous connection to reality would make a Kerry presidency an unacceptable danger to our country.
One of the Swift Boat Vets has said that he and his colleagues–who represent nearly all of the surviving veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam–feel that they have been called to serve their country a second time. The veterans’ problem, of course, is that they don’t have any money. While borderline-criminal multi-billionaires like George Soros and spoiled entertainers like Ben Affleck have the Democrats’ coffers overflowing with tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, the veterans have been able to raise only a pitiful $150,000– most of it from a single home-builder in Houston, who has been slandered for his efforts.

Update – Aug.27 – The entire text of John Kerry’s out of print book “The New Soldier”, as well as links to free chapters from “Unfit For Duty” can be found here

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