Wampum

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It is a word impossible to say. Congressional Committees. Angry men in dark suits and narrow ties.

Someone is burning US intel assets. An al-Qaida regional communications officer (Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan). Two Federal moles in Arab upstate New York (Yassin Muhiddin Aref and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain). An al-Qaida operations officer (Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani). NSA intercepts and national technical capabilities. CIA covert officers and HUMINT/I capabilities.

I'm concerned that there may be agency in these acts. Agency beyond incompetence, the normal signature of this administration. Agency beyond managing the news cycle, the normal responsive media ploys of many administrations. Agency beyond institutional friction, a normal problem even without the "Homeland Security" re-org [1].

The net effect is hardening al-Qaida, and softening the United States. Perhaps it is just a series of coincidences, the weekly media gaming of a regime to dumb and venal to govern with consent or campaign on the issues, and not a planned covert reduction of defense, but that appears to be what is in fact happening.

I'm concerned that the Bush regime may be dismanteling, not constructing, the structure of our mutual defense. The political exploitation by the BC04 campaign of the burning of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan is being discussed in several contexts -- even on Democracy Now, but only as an isolated event, not as one in an increassingly troubling, and increassingly frequent series of similar events, each of which makes attacks on the US more likely, and more likely to achieve some or all of the intents of the attackers. It is as if Kim Philby has moved into the Occupied West Wing, and is managing to make "mistakes" effecting the DoD's theater intel ops, its NRO-based intel product, the DoJ's domestic intel ops, ... and eventually the Coast Guard's perimeter defense.

Update: Bush has nominated a political operative as Director of the CIA. I'm with former Director Turner on this.

[1] Suggestion to the K/E campaign. That re-org may have passed its sell-by date, and two paragraphs on unscrambling the bureacratic omlette may resonate in the standard stump. Try it in a focus group.

Posted by EBW at August 9, 2004 10:39 PM | TrackBack