Treacherous incompetence

Crooked Shooters

"...Meanwhile the Bush administration responded to the terror problem primarily by reorganizing the U.S. government, pulling together a welter of units -- from public safety to border control -- into the Department of Homeland Security. Agencies whose budgets amounted to $37 billion have been consolidated into one entity, for which Bush proposes to spend $29 billion -- and the White House has opposed any attempt to boost that figure.

Not surprisingly, the intelligence unit at Homeland Security stands in total disarray. Housed at the CIA, the unit has had difficulty hiring analysts (there were barely two dozen as recently as June) and has virtually no capability to provide meaningful intelligence. Its director has resigned, purportedly for health reasons.

All that before we even get to Iraq. Nothing about that involvement suggests the careful purposefulness the neocons gloat about. The dispute over the "16 words" only shows that the P.R. strategy for war against Iraq has unraveled. That country was destroyed after our military victory -- not before -- because Rumsfeld insisted an invasion could be done on the cheap. Casualties are mounting in an occupation that now seems aimless, against a multiplying guerrilla foe. The deaths of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay do not change the basic situation, since the problems with the occupation are structural. .."