House of Eratosthenes

Let me state at the outset, my opinion that in the eyes of history, the “Intelligence About Iraq” imbroglio has irredeemably turned all soft and brown. President Bush’s legacy is in the process of being decided, but the legacy of said imbroglio is not. If he is remembered as a golden-boy, beneath a negligible tarnish, like FDR, history will separate him from the imbroglio. If he is trashed, like Ulysses Grant, history will fasten him to the imbroglio. The fecal qualities of the imbroglio have been decided, and chiseled in stone.

The preceding paragraph, appearances notwithstanding, is an indictment against history, not against the imbroglio. Very few things being advanced, articulated and remembered about the imbroglio, are true. To those who bother to study the details, the entire saga is a lesson about the fallibility of history. History has an ugly manufacturing process; it is written by a pinpoint-sized selection of elites, and often by elites who have a variety of different interests in making something go away.

And it seems to be the nature of politics, to make things go away that are in fact true, and enshrine false things high atop a dais of everlasting remembrance. According to the unpleasantnesses being brought to my attention, and at this point I see no reason to doubt them, this pertains in an ugly way to the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden. According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Gen. Hayden has asserted quite a simplistic and half-assed version of events in the above-described imbroglio, on the floor of the United States Senate no less — promised in private to correct the record publicly, and then apparently welched. If what I’m reading is true.

As General Hayden would have known all too well, [Undersecretary of Defense Doug] Feith’s office has been an obsession of Senator [Carl] Levin [D-MI], who contends despite all evidence that mistakes on Iraq intelligence were all the fault of civilian appointees at the Pentagon. The truth, as a bipartisan report from his own committee attests, is that the CIA made most of the errors on its own.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Feith called General Hayden to object to his testimony. And, according to Mr. Feith, General Hayden was apologetic. He said he had not intended to say what he appeared to, and promised to issue a statement correcting the record. Arizona Senator Jon Kyl tells us he had a similar conversation with General Hayden, during which the CIA director promised a remedial letter that could be entered into the Congressional record. “He told us he did not intend those remarks to suggest Doug Feith or the Department of Defense did anything wrong, inaccurate or misleading. That is precisely what he told me,” says Mr. Kyl.

But the General’s subsequent effort, provided to us by Mr. Kyl, is no retraction or correction at all. It says only that his concern about bad intelligence methodology “is not confined to any specific program.” Both Mr. Feith and the Senator have asked Mr. Hayden to be more specific, but so far to no avail. Mr. Hayden also declined to comment for this editorial.

I can’t get too hopping mad at the politicians about the nature of politics. Politics has cast doubt on things that are true, and shone a favorable light of believability on things that are false, ever since the first time one man appointed another to represent him in something. This is just human nature; asked what happened, people like to report what is expected from them, as opposed to what really happened.

Nor am I particularly upset about the people-at-large like myself, being set up to misunderstand what kind of information is sloshing around in the intelligence community. That kind of stuff is classified for a reason; we aren’t supposed to understand everything.

What really bursts my buttons, is the kind of attention, or lack thereof, that is paid to how things like this actually work. How the mechanism actually functions, is the business of the country. If any of that should be obstructed from We, The People, there’s certainly no reason to obstruct same from the view of the legislators who are supposed to be overseeing it.

For Chrissakes. It’s an even-numbered year. We’re about to start a long hot summer of arguing over how the government should steal dimes and quarters from thirty-something apartment rats like myself, and spend it on free Viagra for wealthy, comfortable old farts with summer homes, swimming pools and Winnebagoes. And Al Gore’s bullshit about global warming. And stem cells, exit exams, minimum wage, and SUVs.

Meanwhile, gathering intelligence on bad guys who want to kill Americans, is one of the few things government is really supposed to do.

It appears that the truth is teetering on the brink of being discarded for all of the future foreseeable recorded history, and that a lie is about to be enshrined as the truth. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats are all supposed to be uppity and cantankerous and grouchy over the fact that “mistakes were made,” so to speak — and after the dust has settled, there will be not one single rational, logical reason to expect things to turn out any different next time. The difference between good intelligence and bad intelligence, is PEOPLE DYING. Not just any people; the people we think about on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, some of whom willingly sign up for foot fungus, rotten underwear, months-at-a-time away from their families, and possible loss of life and limb, to make the world a better place. Better people than me. Something is busted that gets these people killed, and we’re not fixing it.

If Gen. Hayden is really telling two different versions of the story to two different sets of people, dancing back & forth depending on who he’s talking to — not, I’m given to understand, an unusual habit in the beltway — he needs to be fired yesterday. That’s assuming I have the story in front of me as it really happened. Which I hope is not the case.

But regardless of that, the time has probably come to let our delegates know we care about this stuff.

Thing I Know #89. Since biblical times, what we have come to call “news” has always been a curious hybrid. It blends whatever is written in the messenger’s scroll, with what the Emperor is ready to hear.

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Beltway TroubleTuesday, June 13th, 2006

Beltway Trouble
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006