PC, protecting incompetents
A fear that all of us true conservatives have had
is that PC and affirmative action
would not just aid the advancement
of demonstrably less competent individuals,
but would also inhibit their being weeded out
once their incompetence was demonstrated
to any reasonable observer.
The most glaring possible example that such is actually occurring
is the comparative treatment of Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.
Calls for Rumsfeld to resign are being heard
throughout the political and media elite,
from both political parties and all ideological positions.
For comparison, consider Condi Rice:
the invalid arguments and strategies regarding Iraq
both fall in the National Security Adviser’s arena.
It is possible that she is not responsible for these disasters,
that she has only been carrying out the failed policies
of her boss.
But before that is established,
it is customary in our system
to demand the replacement of the official overseeing
the areas where failure has been manifest.
If she were a white male,
I can guarantee you that calls for her replacement
would have been cascading from both Congress and the media long ago.
Is our system so sick that being a black female
is inoculation against even so clear signs
that she should be replaced?
For whatever it's worth,
I request that the editorial boards of the NYT, WP and WSJ
come out against the Senate approving her nomination
as Secretary of State,
on the grounds that demonstrated incompetence
should not be rewarded.
All textual emphasis is added by the author of this post.
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence
August 19, 2004, Thursday
By PHILIP SHENON (NYT)
Copyright New York Times Company Aug 19, 2004
A former Bush administration official who led the fruitless postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that
the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice
had botched intelligence information before the war
and was “the dog that did not bark” over Iraq's weapons program.
In uncharacteristically caustic remarks about his former colleagues, the weapons inspector, David Kay, said the National Security Council had failed to protect President Bush from faulty prewar intelligence and had left Secretary of State Colin L. Powell “hanging out in the wind” when he tried to gather intelligence before the war about Iraq's weapons programs.
“Where was the N.S.C?”
Dr. Kay asked,
suggesting that the president had come to depend too heavily
on information supplied by Ms. Rice,
Mr. Bush's national security adviser,
and that the president needed to reach out to others
for national security information.
“Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth,” Dr. Kay told the Senate intelligence committee at a hearing called to discuss the findings of the Sept. 11 commission.
“I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in the intelligence area,” he continued. “The recent history has been a reliance on the N.S.C. system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well.”
Dr. Kay added:
“The dog that did not bark
in the case of Iraq's W.M.D. weapons program,
quite frankly, in my view, is the National Security Council.”
A spokesman for the council did not return phone calls seeking comment on the remarks by Dr. Kay, who was appointed by the Bush administration last year to hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. He resigned early this year after concluding that there were no stockpiles of such weapons.
Dr. Kay did not identify Ms. Rice by name in his often-impassioned testimony.
But
his remarks were clearly aimed at her performance
and reflected a widespread view among intelligence specialists
that Ms. Rice, perhaps Mr. Bush's most trusted aide,
and the National Security Council
have never been held sufficiently accountable
for intelligence failures
before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.
His criticism of the council, which is responsible for
coordinating the work of national security agencies in the government,
mirrored that made earlier this year by Richard A. Clarke,
Ms. Rice's former top counterterrorism deputy, who
accused her of paying little attention to dire intelligence threats
throughout the spring and summer of 2001
that Al Qaeda was about to strike against the United States.
Dr. Kay has said in the past that faulty prewar information about Iraq's weapons programs represented a serious failure of American intelligence agencies. But his comments on Wednesday appeared to go much further, both in their vehemence and in Dr. Kay's willingness to single out particular agencies for blame, notably the National Security Council and the C.I.A.
“Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency,”
Dr. Kay said.
“Until this is taken on board
and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure,
I have a real difficulty in seeking how a national intelligence director
can correct these failures.”
[How on earth could the Washington Pest fail to report these comments?]
He was referring to a proposal by the Sept. 11 commission for the appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee the work of the government's 15 spy agencies, including the C.I.A. and several within the Defense Department.
A C.I.A. spokesman, Mark Mansfield, said after the hearing that “Kay's comments are perplexing and have changed remarkably over time -- he ought to look at some of his own past statements and then perhaps he wouldn't be in such a rush to criticize.”
In his sharp attack on the National Security Council, Dr. Kay said that the council had failed, in particular, to provide Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell with the intelligence information they needed before the war about Iraq's weapons capabilities, especially after both had expressed some skepticism about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs.
“Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's W.M.D. weapons that was made before him?” Dr. Kay asked.
“Why was the secretary of state sent to the C.I.A. to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false?” he continued. “Where was the N.S.C. then?”
=====================================================
Some final comments by the author of this post.
It is amazing to me, as a white male observer of the political process
that Kay's remarks were not followed up.
I attribute that to two, quite politically incorrect, observations:
is that PC and affirmative action
would not just aid the advancement
of demonstrably less competent individuals,
but would also inhibit their being weeded out
once their incompetence was demonstrated
to any reasonable observer.
The most glaring possible example that such is actually occurring
is the comparative treatment of Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.
Calls for Rumsfeld to resign are being heard
throughout the political and media elite,
from both political parties and all ideological positions.
For comparison, consider Condi Rice:
- Both Richard Clarke and David Kaye have said over and over again
that Condi Rice failed to react adequately in the summer of 2001
to the signs of impending terrorist action.
A particularly vivid public condemnation of Rice
appeared in the 2004-08-19-NYT story
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence.
(If that link is bad, click here for alternatives.)
Here is the story's abstract (emphasis is added):David Kay, former Bush administration official
It is astounding,
who led the fruitless postwar effort
to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
tells Congress that
the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice
botched intelligence information
about Iraq's weapons program before war;
his remarks reflect widespread view among intelligence specialists that
Rice and the National Security Council
have never been held sufficiently accountable
for intelligence failures before the 9/11 terrorist attacks
and the Iraq war;
Kay says NSC failed to protect President Bush
from faulty prewar intelligence
and left Secretary of State Colin L Powell 'hanging out in the wind'
when he tried to gather intelligence before the war
about Iraq's weapons programs.
and the surest possible sign of the invidious effects of PC,
that these words were not followed up,
either by Congress or by the media.
That NYT story is so significant,
and so widely ignored
(try and find it in the Washington Post!
E.g., click here.
Obviously, the Graham family’s adoration of
Zionism, feminism, and affirmative action
prevents them from serving the interests of the nation as a whole.),
that I am appending the story, with emphasis added,
together with some final comments by me,
at the end of this post,
following the horizontal separator. - Rice has said that she failed in 2002 to read in its entirety
the ~80 page National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq,
even though Iraq was the most pressing national security issue
on her plate at that time. - She has argued that the post-war stabilization of Iraq
is like the post-war stabilization of Germany.
Coming from a mere politician,
this could easily be dismissed as understandable ignorance.
But coming from a supposed expert on international relations,
it must be seen as rank incompetence.
the invalid arguments and strategies regarding Iraq
both fall in the National Security Adviser’s arena.
It is possible that she is not responsible for these disasters,
that she has only been carrying out the failed policies
of her boss.
But before that is established,
it is customary in our system
to demand the replacement of the official overseeing
the areas where failure has been manifest.
If she were a white male,
I can guarantee you that calls for her replacement
would have been cascading from both Congress and the media long ago.
Is our system so sick that being a black female
is inoculation against even so clear signs
that she should be replaced?
For whatever it's worth,
I request that the editorial boards of the NYT, WP and WSJ
come out against the Senate approving her nomination
as Secretary of State,
on the grounds that demonstrated incompetence
should not be rewarded.
2004-08-19-NYT
Now for the NYT story referenced in item 1.All textual emphasis is added by the author of this post.
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence
August 19, 2004, Thursday
By PHILIP SHENON (NYT)
Copyright New York Times Company Aug 19, 2004
A former Bush administration official who led the fruitless postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that
the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice
had botched intelligence information before the war
and was “the dog that did not bark” over Iraq's weapons program.
In uncharacteristically caustic remarks about his former colleagues, the weapons inspector, David Kay, said the National Security Council had failed to protect President Bush from faulty prewar intelligence and had left Secretary of State Colin L. Powell “hanging out in the wind” when he tried to gather intelligence before the war about Iraq's weapons programs.
“Where was the N.S.C?”
Dr. Kay asked,
suggesting that the president had come to depend too heavily
on information supplied by Ms. Rice,
Mr. Bush's national security adviser,
and that the president needed to reach out to others
for national security information.
“Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth,” Dr. Kay told the Senate intelligence committee at a hearing called to discuss the findings of the Sept. 11 commission.
“I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in the intelligence area,” he continued. “The recent history has been a reliance on the N.S.C. system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well.”
Dr. Kay added:
“The dog that did not bark
in the case of Iraq's W.M.D. weapons program,
quite frankly, in my view, is the National Security Council.”
A spokesman for the council did not return phone calls seeking comment on the remarks by Dr. Kay, who was appointed by the Bush administration last year to hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. He resigned early this year after concluding that there were no stockpiles of such weapons.
Dr. Kay did not identify Ms. Rice by name in his often-impassioned testimony.
But
his remarks were clearly aimed at her performance
and reflected a widespread view among intelligence specialists
that Ms. Rice, perhaps Mr. Bush's most trusted aide,
and the National Security Council
have never been held sufficiently accountable
for intelligence failures
before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.
His criticism of the council, which is responsible for
coordinating the work of national security agencies in the government,
mirrored that made earlier this year by Richard A. Clarke,
Ms. Rice's former top counterterrorism deputy, who
accused her of paying little attention to dire intelligence threats
throughout the spring and summer of 2001
that Al Qaeda was about to strike against the United States.
Dr. Kay has said in the past that faulty prewar information about Iraq's weapons programs represented a serious failure of American intelligence agencies. But his comments on Wednesday appeared to go much further, both in their vehemence and in Dr. Kay's willingness to single out particular agencies for blame, notably the National Security Council and the C.I.A.
“Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency,”
Dr. Kay said.
“Until this is taken on board
and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure,
I have a real difficulty in seeking how a national intelligence director
can correct these failures.”
[How on earth could the Washington Pest fail to report these comments?]
He was referring to a proposal by the Sept. 11 commission for the appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee the work of the government's 15 spy agencies, including the C.I.A. and several within the Defense Department.
A C.I.A. spokesman, Mark Mansfield, said after the hearing that “Kay's comments are perplexing and have changed remarkably over time -- he ought to look at some of his own past statements and then perhaps he wouldn't be in such a rush to criticize.”
In his sharp attack on the National Security Council, Dr. Kay said that the council had failed, in particular, to provide Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell with the intelligence information they needed before the war about Iraq's weapons capabilities, especially after both had expressed some skepticism about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs.
“Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's W.M.D. weapons that was made before him?” Dr. Kay asked.
“Why was the secretary of state sent to the C.I.A. to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false?” he continued. “Where was the N.S.C. then?”
=====================================================
Some final comments by the author of this post.
It is amazing to me, as a white male observer of the political process
that Kay's remarks were not followed up.
I attribute that to two, quite politically incorrect, observations:
- The obvious reluctance of our elite to criticize a black woman.
- The fact that the policies and actions that were made possible
by Rice's neglect and incompetence
were precisely the policies desired by
the main body of America's Jewish community.
She has acted as their agent
in the highest realm of the national security arena,
and that factor in and of itself
has given her great immunity from the criticism
that she so richly deserves.
posted by KHarbaugh at 21:10
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