In Front of Our Nose

The body of a letter to Andrew Sullivan, re: this.

First of all, congratulations on the move to the Atlantic. I guess as a resident of both sides, you're an Oceanic expert.

Second, re: In Front of Our Nose: I always thought that Cheney's attack on Wilson was a small piece of Cheney's antagonism to the CIA.

The CIA didn't play ball when Cheney tried to paint Iraq as the answer to Bush's weaknesses - even before 9/11 - and after 9/11 (when the pretext for an Iraq attack was folded into the war on Al-Qaeda) the CIA was still giving insufficiently politicized intelligence. Cheney eventually succeeded in forcing the CIA to bend to his will - as we saw with George "Slam Dunk" Tenet - which set them up to be the scapegoat for any future failure. The result was a public humiliation of the CIA's effectiveness - shaming the whole professional intelligence officer class. Then Cheney replaced the disgraced Tenet with a hack appointee. This led to a large number of professionals resigning. Then the CIA was demoted in role, yet still being held as the scapegoat for whatever abuses Cheney has ordered (secret prisons, torture).

All in all, Cheney's outing of Plame was part of a plan to cow the heads of the CIA so that Cheney could use them as his cover/victims for all the crimes he intended to commit in the name of national security.

[I just re-read that last paragraph and it makes me sound like a bug-eyed loony, but that is the type of life we're living nowadays.]

Backpost; put up 3-23-2009. I had everything below, why don't I publish these at the time??