Monday, January 4, 2010

Obama screws the CIA

Remember the mock outrage about the Valerie Plame non-story? Well check this out from Redstate. Excerpt:

It appears Barack Obama inexperience and amateurishness has just started bonfires on the bridges connecting him to the American intelligence community and delivered a huge, HUGE psychological win to Al Qaeda.

People tell me the President’s rush to acknowledge the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan and mourn the deaths openly, publicly, and via press release is a huge no no. The CIA and greater intelligence community would prefer not to have the attention put on them. Additionally, because the President took the time to draft a blanket statement focused on the CIA in general instead of individually and more privately focusing on the families of the victims, it acknowledges the CIA’s work in Afghanistan, acknowledges that the attack has an impact on the CIA, and gives the terrorists a new recruiting tool — “you too can cause America to publicly mourn the loss of their spies.”

To you and me this may not seem like a big deal. But I’m told this is hugely significant and shows just how out of touch the Obama administration is with the intelligence community. I’m told that no other President has issued such blanket statements of public mourning directed toward an attack on the CIA and thereby having the White House itself confirming an attack on our intelligence community.

Then he links to this piece of devastation. It turns out that Obama had been at least to some degree warned about the Christmas sausage bomber incident. Excerpt:

Presidential aides are concerned that Obama will somehow be unfairly accused of dropping the ball on the fight against terrorists in Yemen—a country where, in fact, the evidence suggests that Obama, as early as last summer, ordered a significant increase in U.S. intelligence activity. In the weeks before the Christmas incident, several U.S. officials have told NEWSWEEK, Obama authorized a major expansion in U.S. intelligence, military, and material support to Yemen's government—an escalation that some officials acknowledge could be characterized as a new covert war. But Obama's public and private actions in expanding counterterrorism operations in Yemen may not help him avoid answering further questions about what intelligence agencies told him—and didn't tell him—about possible threats to the U.S. homeland in the days and weeks before the alleged underpants bomber boarded his Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Italics mine. Because President Bush was never unfairly accused of anything, was he?

2 comments:

  1. The cold and vindictive part of me feels it serves the CIA right if it is true that they fought the Bush administration at every turn and actively worked against him. If so, they got the president they wanted, and now they have to live with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. in other news, i think crunchy conservatism has reached the end of the road. the blog is now just "rod dreher" and, oh i just fell asleep

    ReplyDelete