CIA purging

One of the most unfortunate parts of this past election is that we're clearly never going to find out just how badly the prewar intelligence was subject to political interference.

The only thing we can surmise, however, is that things are just going to get worse.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources."

The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

The CIA? A hotbed of liberals? Compared to who, exactly? "Liberal" here must mean "apolitical professional", many of whom have looked at the ideological blinders in the White House with horror. The only people left will be true believers, people who have demonstrated (through the Iraq blunders and the Chalabi debacle) that they're singularly unfit to handle this issue.

And intelligence is the key weapon against terrorism. Straight-up warfare is of dubious usefulness at best without it, and coordination between intelligence and law enforcement is the best way of really stopping problems before they start. It's not like the U.S. can invade Spain just because Al Qaeda may have some cells there.

I'm reminded of Alan Rickman's famous line in Die Hard, when all his plans were brought to fruition. "You want a miracle, gentlemen? I give you the F...B...I."

Osama needs a miracle to succeed.

We gave him B...U...S...H.