Right Wing Nut House

There are apparently no limits to which the cadre of leakers who are working in our intelligence agencies will go to undermine legitimate national security interests in furtherance of their own, private agendas. The revelations in today’s USA Today about the massive collection of telephone numbers by the NSA - not eavesdropping on calls, not gathering people’s names or addresses - was leaked solely to discredit General Michael Hayden and derail his nomination for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The news that the NSA has information on billions of phone calls made by US citizens since 9/11 should not surprise anyone who has been following the NSA intercept program closely. Which is why lefties are going absolutely ballistic:

John Aravosis:

The phone companies were NOT required to turn over our records - Qwest refused - but AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth gave the Mein Kampf salute. Pigs.

I’m going to say it again. Encrypt your emails NOW:

And I might add…don’t forget to adjust your tinfoil hat, LOON.

Booman Tribune:

I’m not even going to pretend that I’m capable of digesting this and spitting out a rational response. A database of every call ever made? There really are no words. I don’t quite know when it was that we lost our way, though I doubt that it began when the worst president ever took office. No, the desire and the effort to subvert the rights of America’s citizens has manifested itself throughout our nation’s history, though the technology to do so on such a massive scale is relatively new. What the Worst President Ever has given us, is an executive branch which, through its actions, has demonstrated utter contempt for our nation, its citizens, our constitution and the basic morality which compels most of us, from a very early age, to try to speak honestly and act in the best interest of those around us. This is nothing but bad faith and contempt as far as the eye can see.

Um…yeah.

Matt Stoller blames big business:

Qwest refused to help? And Verizon and AT&T (which bought Bellsouth) acted as nice little sycophants? Wow. I always hated Verizon because of their customer service, and AT&T is run by a megalomaniac named Ed Whitacre who likes to destroy trees in his spare time. But I still assumed that cooperation with the government was mandatory. It’s not. These companies are aiding and abetting the NSA in illegal activity. And not only are they aiding and abetting the NSA, they are possibly engaging in illegal corporate behavior. That at least is how Qwest is reading the law.

I say we should nationalize the Telecoms!

Mcjoan from Kos:

Obviously, they’re fighting terror. Because every single American might just be participating in terrorism. So they really need to keep track of all of our phone calls. It’s obvious, right? Obvious, but not particularly legal, though since when has that stopped BushCo?

At least there are a few saner heads on the left. Kevin Drum:

The rules for collecting data about phone calls are different from the rules about listening in on the content of phone calls, so I don’t know what the legal situation here is. However, although most domestic carriers cooperated with the NSA, one of them didn’t: Qwest.

Mark Kleiman:

So now we know about the even nastier program that made BushCo so determined to cover up the warrantless wiretaps. The NSA has been compiling a master database of all telephone calls made in the United States: not the content, but who called whom and when.

Still, I don’t think the voters are going to hold still for it. Not with a President the country already distrusts.

I think Mark underestimates the tolerance by voters for measures like this. While I think a case can be made on constitutional grounds that if argued correctly before SCOTUS could result in a ruling that the NSA intercept program was illegal (a very close call either way), I don’t think this aspect of data collection by the NSA even approaches the danger zone, a point made in the article in USA Today (not anywhere near the lead of course):

The government is collecting “external” data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting “internals,” a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for “social network analysis,” the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

FISA doesn’t even enter into the discussion of whether the program is legal:

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn’t necessary for government data-mining operations. “FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining,” said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.

The caveat, he said, is that “personal identifiers” — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can’t be included as part of the search. “That requires an additional level of probable cause,” he said.

Since the only thing being collected are telephone numbers, it is doubtful that what the NSA is doing here even constitutes a “search” as it would be defined under the 4th Amendment.

Exactly what the NSA is doing with the records of billions of phone calls isn’t exactly clear according to the article:

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

Of course, the “detailed records” the government has probably include a phone number, and the date and time it was made, as well as who was on the other end. Technical details about which “switching station” the call was originally routed through would probably be available as well.

The article points out that it would be easy enough to retrieve your name and address if the government wanted to - a disturbing piece of information if you are a terrorist. Come to think of it, that aspect of the program should make everyone uncomfortable. Which leads us to the $64,000 question; is this program really necessary? Or are the spooks just playing fast and loose with the constitution for the hell of it?

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. “There is no domestic surveillance without court approval,” said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government “are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists.” All government-sponsored intelligence activities “are carefully reviewed and monitored,” Perino said. She also noted that “all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States.”

If “all appropriate members of Congress” have been told of this program (something we’ll surely find out in a few hours whether nor not that statement is factual) without a peep prior to this, I would guess that there are aspects to the program not contained in the USA Today story that make this part of the NSA intercept program a necessary adjunct to their efforts regarding overseas communications. And if it were possible to have a debate about the efficacy of these programs as they relate to our constitutional rights without the jaw-dropping idiocy from the left and right, it might be instructive and necessary to the health of the republic.

But these kind of debates just are not possible. Not with this President in office. Not with the kind of unreasoning hatred the opposition displays on a daily basis. Any kind of rationality displayed by the left is taken as treason and the offender is drummed out of the tin foil hat brigade forthwith (Senator Lieberman, call you office).

So we are stuck with the unsatisfying feeling that we can’t be 100% sure that the programs are necessary because the left refuses to engage on any level but the gutter - and that is not a level conducive to arguing the merits of anything.

As I mentioned at the top of this piece, this story has been leaked as a transparent attempt to embarrass General Hayden and stop his nomination. While it will probably cause outrage on the left and among that ever more curious contrarian Senator Specter, the brouhaha over this will pass and Hayden should still be on track for confirmation.

If I were Howard Dean, I would very quietly and without much fuss, lock John Conyers in a closet until after the November elections:

The left-wing Democrat who will become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins back Congress in November wants to hold full-blown congressional hearings on whether the government should pay black Americans reparations for slavery.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers has attracted attention in recent months for his House resolution calling for an impeachment investigation against President Bush.

But another Conyers cause célèbre is reparations, which he’s been advocating since 1989, when he first introduced legislation to establish what he calls “The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African American Act” (H.R. 40).

This is a great idea. No, I mean it. The precedent being established for paying reparations to groups whose economic exploitation built up the United States economy in the 19th and 20th century will allow every single immigrant group standing to agitate for reparations.

Don’t know what the American people would think of the idea, though. It would be better if Dean took Representative Conyers by the hand and led him (along with the KosKids, the DU’ers, and the Hampsterites) where they were all about 100 miles from the nearest TV camera or microphone. Right now, they may be the only thing standing in the way of a smashing victory for Democrats in November. But not if the voters get a whiff of Conyer’s scathingly brilliant ideas about reparations.

Why stop at those whose ancestors were slaves? Aside from the obvious race baiting by Conyers and his fellow racialists, the logic inherent in reparations bypasses the notion of justice and instead, settles on a tote board system of economic accountability where the US government is liable due to its enabling of the exploitation either constitutionally as in the case of slavery or through a failure to pass legislation that would have given immigrants basic protections against the obvious exploitive nature of 19th century capitalism (ignorance is no excuse!).

The real problem with reparations for the descendants of slaves is the impossibility of rendering such a program with even a smidgen of fairness.

Who, pray tell, would be eligible? And how, in God’s name, could such a program be fairly administered?

Given the paucity of historical records, it would be an impossibility to judge who was deserving and who wasn’t. And what of citizens of mixed race? How “black” does one have to be in order to collect the bounty? I can see an entire new judicial court system set up to adjudicate claims: Race Court.

Do you grant more in reparations to someone whose ancestors were kidnapped in the 18th century? Do you give less to those whose family came later? And, just so that I know what I’m supposed to be feeling guilty about, are we only paying for the sin of slavery or are my children and grandchildren going to be paying for Jim Crow and segregation as well?

Most of my family came here in the 1880’s, long after slavery was dead and buried. Am I to suffer for the sins of my race? Not even paying for the sins of my father or grandfather? What a novel indictment!

Yes, the Democrats have some new ideas they should be running on in November. It’s a good thing that Conyers is going to be too busy impeaching President Bush to turn his attention to this extortion scheme. Otherwise, he might be free to do some serious mischief to the idea of fairness and the rule of law.

Just when you think the United Nations couldn’t sink any lower in the estimation of rational, sober minded people everywhere they go and open an east coast affiliate of The Comedy Store smack dab in the middle of Turtle Bay.

Six nations with poor human rights records were among those elected to the new Human Rights Council on Tuesday, although notorious violators that had belonged to the predecessor Human Rights Commission did not succeed in winning places in the new group.

China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, countries cited by human rights groups as not deserving membership, were among the 47 nations elected to the council. But in a move hailed by the same groups, both Iran and Venezuela failed to attract the needed votes.

Now I’m all for having a good laugh. But I think creating a showcase for low comedy at an ostensibly serious venue like the UN is just unconscionable. After all, the UN does very serious work. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a hash of all the hot spots around the world. I mean, how many hours of heroic effort went into thinking up the idea for UN Peacekeepers to get out of their Robin’s egg blue vehicles and drive around in pink Cadillacs, all the better to ply their trade as internationally sanctioned pimps?

Or what about playing footsie for more than a decade with a homicidal lunatic like Saddam Hussein? And whoever thought up the one about disguising Kofi Anan as an honest, effective, upstanding diplomat instead of the money grubbing, corrupt incompetent boob that he truly is deserves some kind of award - probably fashioned in the form of those oil for food leases so generously doled out by Saddam prior to his ouster?

And I also would like to take issue with the name of this new comedy club. “Human Rights Council” just doesn’t do it for me. There’s no pizazz, no sex in that moniker. Now if you were to call it “Fidel’s House of Laughs” or “Vladimir’s Basement Comedy Club and Torture Chamber” - that might pique my interest a little.

I’d also like to point out that there are a couple of others whose auditions were spectacular and didn’t make the final cut. I think an investigation is in order to find out why Mahmoud and Hugo were left off the final roster of performers. Should we blame this guy?

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The good news is that we did better than expected in the voting because Iran and Venezuela both lost. Venezuela’s losing shows that bluster and anti-Americanism isn’t enough to get elected.”

Nations running for the council had to meet more demanding standards than in the past.

Actually, I kind of want to see old Kenneth get a shot at stand-up. That joke about why Mahmoud and Hugo lost because it “isn’t enough” to be an America hater is a real knee slapper. Isn’t it some kind of admission that even though it’s “not enough” to be anti-American, it sure as hell helps if you are? Jeeezuz!

As for those “more demanding standards,” I guess the world can live with them if the UN can. Then again, talking to democracy advocates in Azerbaijan to get their opinion of these new “standards” may prove difficult because if they’re not rotting in some jail where visits from nice, clean, neat UN bureaucratic toadies are frowned upon as much as the inmate’s supposed “crimes,” then they’re in a graveyard which would make asking their opinion of anything problematic to say the least.

The UN is not a place for serious people. And anyone who proposes that the United States in any way curtail its efforts to stand up for what it believes to be its national interests just so that this corrupt gang of lying, weaselly, kleptocratic hypocrites won’t wag their fingers at us and tell us how beastly we are deserves either electoral oblivion or the scorn and outrage of their fellow citizens.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has lots ‘o’ links and stuff including this from an reader:

China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. what else do you notice? Both Russia and Saudi Arabia’s heads of states have been to GW’s Crawford Ranch (though i dont recall if President Bush also held hands and smooched Putin), an honor bestowed on few world leaders. Pakistan’s Musharraf is routinely praised by Bush despite his non-democratic/military government. probably has his own room in the White House. And China, well with the latest criticism of Taiwan, Bush’s kisisng up to the Asian giant needs no further explaining.

The reader goes on to say that we have no right to criticize the UN since we cozy up to these thugs.

I’m one who actually thought that Bush’s second inaugural speech where he talked about a change in American policy toward the dictators and thugs who run countries that are allied to us, was one of the most decent impulses in American foreign policy since the end of World War II. The fact that his Administration has failed miserably to turn that talk into action is one of the great disappointments many of us on the right feel toward the President.

Still, the criticism of the new members on the Council is valid. The United States government is not the UN Human Rights Council. If the UN were serious about promoting human rights, they would place representatives on that Council that were actually in favor of the general idea. As it is, the best representatives for all of those countries named above are in jail or executed. The government boot lickers who we will get as representatives instead deserve our scorn and disapprobation.

Ed Morrissey ties in the Human Rights Council idiocy with “ethical standards” for businesses:

If the farcical selection of the guardians of human rights doesn’t make people laugh out loud at Turtle Bay, then its new push for “moral investment” will. The UN has drawn up a set of principles for businesses to model if they want to have the moral imprimatur of the UN with which to attract investors. It sounds reasonable in principle, but as a result, entire industries get locked out of the UN’s good graces.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out which industries Ed is talking about.

A.M. Mora y Leon also has a superior take on the choices for the new Council.

Why is it when the world’s thugs, tyrants, madmen, and dictators open their yaps and attack the United States, they sound like someone who’s hacked the Democratic National Committee mainframe and downloaded Howard Dean’s next speech?

The reasons might surprise you. First and foremost, liberal talking points about America are a perfect fit for the victimology used by these galoots to assure their own people that being poor, oppressed, ignorant, and a slave to superstition is not really their own damn fault but rather their plight is due to the evil machinations of Bush, the CIA, and the Zionist Neo-conservative monsters who control America. This is standard boilerplate for the dictators of the world who can claim legitimacy in this regard thanks to a compliant and agreeable media here in this country.

And that’s the second reason the world’s troublemakers use Democratic party talking points when skewering America; they know that their critique will get wide distribution in this, the most media saturated nation on earth. The fact is, they are counting on their allies on the western left to absorb their critique and then regurgitate it into harmless sounding bromides which reflect the essence of their diatribes while making the criticisms more palatable by dressing them up in the language of victimhood and brotherhood.

In short, the world’s bad guys have figured out that the best way to affect American policy and politics is to parrot the rot that emanates from the left on a daily basis.

The liberals deny this, of course, In fact, they get downright apoplectic if you even mention it. But the evidence is there for anyone with half a brain to see. From Osama Bin Laden’s cutsie references to Fahrenheit 911 in his pre-election message, to this latest screamer from Iranian President Ahmadinejad, whose letter to the President could almost have been written (sans the kooky religious overtones) by Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill, the tyrants of the world seem to have picked up on the fact that they have natural allies in the west who oppose the United States for exactly the same reasons they do.

For example, before even knowing the contents of the letter, Kevin Drum instructed us in what it really meant:

But I guess the interesting question is whether the Bush administration wants to talk with Iran. We know they didn’t want to three years ago, and we also know that the recently proposed talks about Iraq haven’t gotten anywhere, but maybe it’s different this time. After all, they aren’t quite on top of the world the way they thought they were in 2003, and there is a midterm election coming up. It’s just barely possible that if Bush thinks talks could make some kind of progress in the next few months that it might help his chances in November.

But probably not. The Bushies are far more likely to view the Iranian offer as either a trick or a sign of weakness, and the smart money says the Iranians get turned down. Besides, there’s a slim chance the talks might succeed, and what happens to our plans to bomb them back into the stone age then?

Is it coincidence or proof of my thesis that a government mouthpiece at Tehran University echoed Mr. Drum’s comments:

“It would be a big mistake if the United States dismissed it or if they only consider it as a philosophical, religious, historical letter,” Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Tehran University, said by telephone. “It would be a good idea if President Bush responds to it. It can open up some space.”

Respond to what? This?

“Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems,” Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote.

If that sounds familiar, Hitler said something similar:

Hitler: “Thus democracy will in practice lead to the destruction of a people’s true values. And this also serves to explain how it is that people with a great past from the time when they surrender themselves to the unlimited, democratic rule of the masses slowly lose their former position.”

Far be it from me to compare Hitler with the left (although reading his rants against the Soviet Union is an interesting exercise in rhetorical comparisons when you substitute “Republican” for “Communist”), but there are some truly remarkable similarities between the language used in Ahmadinejad’s insufferably arrogant lecture and criticisms of Bush and the US government that you can read any day of the week on Daily Kos:

“Sept. 11 was not a simple operation,” he wrote. “Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligences and security services, or with extensive infiltration? Of course, this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret?”

[...]

But he asks: “Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?”

Like any smart 9/11 conspiracy loon, Ahmadinejad couches his accusations in the form of a question, thus inoculating himself against charges of being a nutcase while at the same time, raising a straw man that is impossible to knock down. And anyone familiar with the 2004 Presidential campaign recognizes the rhetoric as coming from the same people (Representative Cynthia McKinney) that the “whole story” of 9/11 is being deliberately withheld from the American people.

Meanwhile, the media is playing their role perfectly. The Associated Press is enthusiastic that this insulting, arrogant, self-serving missive from Ahmadinejad is actually the theocrat’s way of showing he only wants to be our friend - if only the US would stop being so mean to the despots, the mass murderers, and brutes of the world:

In places, he strikes a soft, almost fatherly stance. On its first page, Ahmadinejad strikes a tone of a man who is troubled by a friend’s actions and decides to sit down and give him a little advice.

He later casts himself as a humble teacher and man of faith who mingles with students and common people.

Uh…okay dad. Mind if I borrow the car tonight and oh, by the way, do you have an extra $50 for gas?

Not to be outdone, the New York Times informs us that the President’s belief in Christianity should make him a soul brother of the Iranian President:

While the letter laid out a litany of policy disputes with the United States, it was also personal, urging President Bush, who is candid about his religious conviction, to examine his actions in the light of Christian values. As he has done in the past, the Iranian struck a prophetic tone, which is certain to be well received by his core supporters and mocked by his opponents.

Of course, this is the talking point of talking points for the left; that Bush is a hypocrite because his professed belief in Christianity is at odds with his warlike actions. The fact that the President’s loyalty to the United States should conflict with his belief in “turning the other cheek” or any other Christan platitude is a sure sign that Bush does not allow his faith to dictate American security interests, which makes him directly the opposite of the religious fanatic who currently runs Iran.

There is very little commentary on the left so far about not only what the letter means but what’s in it. This is hardly surprising. When an American hater like Ahmadinejad starts sounding exactly like the President’s opponents, it pays not to advertise that fact for reasons of electoral survival.

But if I were a lefty, I wouldn’t worry. After all, most of the media has your back on this issue and will be extraordinarily careful in not mentioning the similarities between you and a deadly enemy of the United States.

UPDATE II

Stanley Renshon has a fascinating psycological/political take on Ahmadinejad’s letter - which shouldn’t be surprising because Renshon is a political psychologist.

A sampling:

It’s not only that the letter is framed in large religious and political terms like “needs of humanity,” “rational behavior, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, progress, property, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity,” and calls on Mr. Bush to “follow the teaching of divine prophets.” Words like peace; justice, progress and prosperity have many meanings of course. However, in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s view they all lead in one direction—that Mr. Bush and the United States have, by their behavior both at home and abroad strayed from the path of virtue as defined by Mr. Ahmadinejad and reaped the just rewards of world hated as a result.

Read the whole thing.

Like a man on death row being saved from execution by that last minute call from the governor, Charles Logan was granted a reprieve from taking his own life by a bureaucratic slimeball not fit to lick Jack Bauer’s running shoes.

The betrayal by Miles - predicted here and everywhere - was nevertheless a shocking event thanks to the sheer nakedness of his power grab. Not for country, not for loyalty, not for love did Miles sell his soul and cast his lot with the traitors. He did it for his own personal aggrandizement, for advancement, for a seat at the table with the big boys.

It certainly was a tempting opportunity. After all, how many times in your life can you force the President of the United States to become beholden to you? What Miles doesn’t realize, of course, is that the President is never really in your debt - especially in life and death matters. Because once that tape is destroyed or in Logan’s hands, Miles becomes just another loose end to tie up, a man with a great big bullseye on his back. Henderson realized this and made the appropriate arrangements. But Miles does not appear to have that self-preservation instinct that separate true predators such as Henderson from other species. In short, Miles is living an illusion, a fact that he will probably realize before he dies a horrible, deserved death.

It was typical of Logan to take the easy way out and then try to justify his suicide by thinking that he was sparing the country a traumatic Presidential trial. When we first witnessed his transformation from simpering fool to evil conspirator, I thought that he might exhibit more of his darker side, the stubborn, ruthless manipulator. Instead, we see Graham (Mr. Big) running him like he was a mark, a grifter’s plaything, with the shadowy mastermind knowing exactly which emotional buttons to press and when to press them. Graham has always been the one in charge as he has played on Logan’s grandiloquent view of himself as super-patriot to advance the plot along. It appears now that the conspiracy was about oil after all, kind of a let down but typical of the venial nature and personality of Logan that he would see himself as some kind of savior rather than the tool he so obviously is.

Logan’s reprieve will be shortlived. One gets the feeling that even if Miles succeeds in destroying the evidence, Jack will find a way to mete out the rough justice that this jellyfish of a man so richly deserves.

SUMMARY

Even though he has the tape, Jack is hardly out of the woods. He realizes that with the plane landing, he will be vulnerable to being picked up by Logan loyalists and “disappeared” rather easily. Conferring with Bill and Granny Hayes, they all agree that Curtis should go out to the airport to meet him and bring him back to CTU. Jack asks about Audrey who is in the CTU infirmary being treated for her sliced vein.

And this is where we find Audrey when Curtis bursts in to inform her that her father Secretary Heller survived a 60 foot plunge off a cliff into a lake - upside down no less. Or, Heller bailed before the car went over the cliff. Curtis doesn’t say and frankly, we don’t need to know. It appears that the Secretary is either in negotiations with Fox or has already been signed for next year. One wonders if Jack will find it in his heart to forgive his future father in law for betraying him at the warehouse. Come to think of it, he had his own daughter hogtied to that pole as well. Wonder how Audrey feels about that?

Mr. Big gives Logan his marching orders about the shootdown. The plotters (who seem to have access to all sorts of technical wizardry) will fake a “VCI Distress Signal” which lets air traffic controllers know that a plane is hijacked and the pilot is planning on using the aircraft as a weapon of mass destruction. Logan seems to be having second thoughts until Graham reminds him of the consequences if that tape were to fall into the wrong hands.

Back at CTU, now that Jack has the tape, Granny releases Bill from custody. This is getting to be too much for Miles whose bureaucratic sense of protocols is being horrifically violated. His lower lip quivers at the impropriety of it all and one gets the sure sense that the tipping point for the lickspittle is coming soon.

At the ranch, Mike rushes in to tell Logan what he already knows about the VCI signal. In a pretty convincing act, Logan appears reluctant to shoot down the plane but with the Admiral in charge of air defense (?) egging him on, he appears to finally give in and order the plane shot out of the sky, much to Mike Novik’s displeasure and disbelief.

Almost immediately, CTU gets word of the shoot down order and Granny phones Jack to give him the bad news. Henderson’s pilot informs Jack that he needs at least 5,000 feet of runway and Jack gives Bill the task of looking for a landing area on the freeway. In the middle of this, Chloe walks casually back into CTU which really doesn’t sit well with Miles at all. In the situation room now with Bill and Granny, Chloe and the gang work to bring Jack safely down with that tape.

It’s not going to be easy. An F-18 is zeroing in on the plane while Bill finds a stretch of freeway that will just have to do - even though it’s only 4,000 feet - a thousand feet short of what the pilot requested but what’s 1,000 feet more or less for a 737? Jack phones Curtis who is somewhere in the Los Angeles metropolitan area to tell him of the landing zone.

Things are getting dicey on the plane. Chloe informs Jack that the F-18 will have missile lock shortly which spurs Jack to order the pilot to nose the plane over and go into a steep dive. The frightened pilot obeys as the passengers experience the absolute terror of an airplane about to crash. In a great series of cuts, we go from the cockpit of the plane, to the radar showing the proximity of the F-18, and back to the cockpit as the ground starts coming up to meet the diving plane. As the ground proximity alarm goes off, Jack and the pilot attempt to level the airliner off.

The F-18 pilot informs Logan that the plane is trying to land and that he’s got missile lock. For the briefest of moments, we hang suspended in mid-air as Logan frantically orders the shootdown to continue only to have Mike talk him out of it. Instead, he orders Marines to cordon off the area so that Jack can be picked up.

But Jack’s not on the ground yet. As the plane touches down, passengers are thrown all over the cabin as the jet fights to slow down before it runs out of freeway. Coming to a dead stop just yards from an overpass, the passengers begin an emergency disembarkation hurried along by Jack who ducks out the door over the wing and tries to disappear into the night.

Mr. Big doesn’t sound very confident as he hears the news that Jack and the plane made it down safely. Logan assures him that the Marines will pick him up and that all is well. We know better. Logan only sent two battalions of Marines to handle Jack which everyone knows will turn into a slaughter - of the Marines that is.

We’ll never find out because Curtis arrives precisely where he needs to; on the other side of the freeway. Jack hops in and things are starting to look up for the boys until they run into a roadblock of some very mean looking Marines. But Curtis is able to bluff his way through and Jack heads to CTU with the tape that will bring Logan’s political career to an end.

Before Jack arrives however, Miles has had enough. Watching Bill and Chloe walk around scott free after helping Jack, who he believes to be a federal fugitive, violates every rule he’s got crammed into that bureaucratic brain of his. He threatens Granny with exposure unless let in on the secret. Hayes realizes she has no choice and fills in her long time assistant who is shocked, just shocked at the lapse in protocols. After telling him “It’s imperative this stay between us,” Granny gets back to work while the rest of us know full well there’s not much chance Miles will keep his promise.

Hayes moves on to the transfer of the terrorist Bierko who after politely informing the thug he will enjoy the hospitality of CTU’s main holding facility, makes his way to the van where we see significant looks of recognition exchanged between the driver of the van and Bierko. One begins to wonder if CTU recruitment posters are plastered all of the walls of terrorist hideouts worldwide, so easy it is to infiltrate this organization.

At the ranch, Mike gives Logan the good/bad news about Jack escaping the Marine dragnet. Looking like a little lost boy, Logan realizes the jig is up and immediately begins to think of a way out. Only one door appears to be opening and we all see it - suicide.

Jack’s reunion with Audrey at the CTU infirmary is too tender, too affecting not to set off warning bells in our heads. Since Jack is destined not to be happy in his life, we can only surmise that the clock is ticking on Audrey and it’s only a matter of time and the manner of her death that are in question.

The President’s conversation with Mr. Big is not very revealing. We already know his decision to kill himself has been made. I found it interesting when he said that “a trial would expose certain ‘harsh realities’ that should never see the light of day.” Typical politician who doesn’t trust the American people with the truth. After hanging up, we see the nice, shiny, silver automatic pistol that Charles has brought to his desk in a beautiful wooden box.

With Logan resigned to his fate, he makes one last visit to Martha in order to ask her forgiveness. Martha ain’t drinkin’ that Kool Aid:

LOGAN: I want to tell you how sorry I am for everything.

MARTHA: When you forget to give me something for my birthday, that’s when you say you’re sorry.

She congratulates him on being such a good liar; “If I wasn’t so horrified by the fact that I’m married to you, I’d actually be impressed.” And with that, Charles goes back for the gun.

Sitting at his desk, he looks perfectly comfortable with his decision. A last look around. A last drink (Single malt scotch? Good choice.) And then Miles oozes over the phone with his offer of salvation that Logan grabs onto with the gusto of a shipwreck survivor being tossed a lifeline. We don’t wonder about what motivates Miles to turn traitor when Logan says “Miles, I won’t forget this.” To which the snake replies “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

Reprieved indeed.

BODY COUNT

I’m very glad I didn’t add Heller to the body count which means I don’t have to take him off. And Mr. Death is certainly well rested as for the second week in a row, nary a soul is sent packing.

JACK: 30

SHOW: 184

SPECULATION

I apologize for neglecting to post the speculation on Sunday night as I promised but real life briefly intruded and I had to forgo the pleasure.

We’ll try it again this week.

UPDATE

It’s Jack Bauer Appreciation Day at Blogs4Bauer. Stop by and appreciate Jack! And while you’re there, check out the best summaries and photoshops in the 24 universe.

By any standard, Karl Rove must be considered one of the most successful political strategists in history. Perhaps only FDR’s political alter ego Louis Howe, who guided Roosevelt’s fortunes for more than 20 years and helped establish the Democratic party’s dominance in Congress, was more influential.

But where Howe eschewed promoting FDR’s agenda (except as it made his boss look good politically), Rove took on the dual role of political mastermind and policy wonk, a combination that worked quite well during the President’s first term. Prior to 9/11, Bush received high marks for reaching out to Congress on education and healthcare as well as laying the groundwork of his tax cuts. After the attack, Rove proved himself both a patriot and brilliant strategist as he showcased the President’s resolve to fight the War on Terror by taking the fight directly to the enemy. Bush’s numbers seemed to go up after every such appearance, much to the continuing discomfort of the Democrats.

For this, as well as his reputation for playing hardball politics, Rove earned the undying enmity of the left. He was “The Dark Lord” or “The Evil One.” The howls of rage heard from Democrats during the 2002 election as Rove engineered a vote to authorize force in Iraq, deducing correctly that the only way such a vote could receive bi-partisan support was if the timing was tied to the political survival of Democratic candidates, were exceeded only by the outcry against his seeming to question the patriotism of Democrats during the 2004 election.

Thus, Rove has been a lightening rod of sorts for Bush, taking some of the heat off his boss when the going got tough. But what worked well in the first term has fallen apart in the second. In the last year, there have been many so many missteps both in policy and public relations at the White House that Bush has decided that Rove should be relieved of his policy duties in order to concentrate fully on the upcoming 2006 mid term elections. The reason is simple; the survival of the Republican majority and perhaps even of Bush himself:

The prospect of the administration spending its last two years being grilled by angry Democrats under the heat of partisan spotlights has added urgency to the efforts by Karl Rove and Mr. Bush’s political team to hang on to the Republican majorities in Congress.

Newly shorn of the daily policymaking duties he took on after the 2004 campaign and now refocused on his role as Mr. Bush’s chief strategist, Mr. Rove is facing an increasingly difficult climate for Republicans, and an increasingly assertive Democratic Party.

The ambitious second-term agenda he helped develop has faltered even with a Republican Congress. His once-grand plans for creating a broadened and permanent Republican majority have given way to a goal of clinging to control of the House and Senate.

The prospect of Democrats capturing either, however, may be one of the best weapons Mr. Rove has as he turns to what he has traditionally done best: motivating his party’s conservative base to turn out on Election Day.

But Rove enters what is probably his final campaign limping. That’s because Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will have the final say on whether or not Rove will continue to manage the mid term effort or forced to resign as a result of being indicted:

Fitzgerald, according to sources close to the case, is reviewing testimony from Rove’s five appearances before the grand jury. Bush’s top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it to Fitzgerald in his earlier testimony.

Fitzgerald is weighing Rove’s foggy-memory defense against evidence he has acquired over nearly 2 1/2 years that shows Rove was very involved in White House efforts to beat back allegations that Bush twisted U.S. intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to sources involved in the case.

Rove is said to be worried about being indicted although he apparently hasn’t let the prospect bother him enough to throw him off his gameplan to maintain Republican majorities in Congress:

With so much on the line, Mr. Rove has taken to traveling the country to form strategies with individual candidates and local parties while brainstorming with the president’s political and policy teams on broad items the White House can pursue to help Republicans everywhere. He is focusing on only the major planks of Mr. Bush’s agenda and not the minutiae of policy that had consumed hours of his day.

In regular West Wing breakfast sessions catered by the White House mess, Mr. Rove and the White House political director, Sara Taylor, have already been reaching out to nervous and vulnerable Republicans, three at a time, laying out an emerging three-prong attack on Democrats over national security, taxes and health care.

In meetings at the White House, aboard Air Force One and in candidates’ home states, Mr. Rove is trying to rally Republicans to stand by the president and his agenda.

He has focused in particular on uniting them behind the administration’s proposals to overhaul immigration, which include guest worker provisions that conservatives despise; the Iraq war, which has driven Mr. Bush’s poll numbers sharply downward; and the Medicare prescription drug program, which the administration says will cost $872 billion from 2006 to 2014 and which Mr. Bush backed enthusiastically despite complaints from conservatives that it was a vast expansion of the social welfare state.

Clearly, the loss of Rove would leave a huge hole that Republicans would have a hard time filling. GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman is an able fellow, an adept fundraiser and a master at outreach programs to minorities. But he leaves much to be desired as a grand strategist. Rove had a certain heft about him, a gravitas that was the result of his close relationship with the President. When Rove talks, party leaders and GOP operatives listen. The loss of Rove would also probably mean an internal battle in the White House as aides would jockey for dominance. Rove’s presence on the White House staff precluded such internecine battles simply because of who he was and his dominant relationship with the President. Any such scrambling among White House staff would be enormously distracting and would add to the impression of a listing ship of state.

So what are the chances that Rove won’t even get a chance to carry the GOP to victory in November?

Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, responded that “just because Rove was involved in the defense of the White House Iraq policy, it does not follow that he was necessarily involved in some effort to discredit Wilson personally. Nor does it prove that there even was an effort to disclose Plame’s identity in order to punish Wilson.”

Rove expects to learn as soon as this month if he will be indicted — or publicly cleared of wrongdoing — for making false statements in the CIA leak case, according to sources close to the presidential adviser.

An indictment would be devastating to a White House already battered by low poll numbers, a staff shake-up and a stalled agenda. If Rove is cleared, however, it would allow Bush’s longtime top aide to resume his central role as White House strategic guru without a legal threat hanging over him.

In Edwin O’Connor’s novel The Last Hurrah, the former long time Mayor Frank Skeffington is convinced to run for Mayor one last time after being out of office many years. But much to his chagrin, he finds that politics and elections have changed dramatically with the advent of television and mass media. The old ways simply didn’t work any longer as the courtly, glad handing ex-Mayor is defeated in his comeback bid. While some have likened the character in the novel to a former Boston Mayor Patrick Curley, others (including himself) said it was based on John F. Kennedy’s maternal grandfather who served several terms as Mayor of Boston and in the late 1940’s ran one last unsuccessful campaign.

JFK’s grandfather’s name? John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad may be in trouble.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that the radical firebrand sent a letter to George Bush through the Swiss embassy, the first direct communication between the Iranians and Americans in 27 years:

Iran’s president has written to President Bush proposing ”new solutions” to their differences, a spokesman in Tehran said Monday.

Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said the letter would be the first in 27 years from an Iranian leader to an American president.

The letter was sent via the Swiss Embassy, which hosts a U.S. interests section in Tehran, Elham told a news conference.

The United States has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 storming of the American Embassy in Tehran.

No doubt there will be much more on this today as the story unfolds. But given Ahmadinejad’s recent rhetoric, I hardly think this letter was his idea. Which could mean some of the slightly less radical but still virulently anti-American, anti-West elements in the Iranian government may have temporarily at least, achieved the upper hand and have forced this course of action on the Iranian President.

Could all the war talk in Washington have spooked the mullahs and forced them to rein in their wild-eyed creation? Trying to glean much from a wire service story is an exercise in pure speculation but we can make some intelligent guesses based on what we know has been happening in Iran over the last few months as Ahmadinejad has been at war with a faction led by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjami:

The more pragmatic Iranian leaders, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, while in principle supporting continuation of the [nuclear] program, believe that Iran must refrain from antagonizing the West, particularly the U.S., over its nuclear activities. They are more inclined to reach a deal worked out by the three leading EU countries, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, rather than relying on Russian and Chinese support at the Security Council. They believe that the extent of trade and economic ties these two countries have with the U.S. and the EU is critical; confronted with serious pressure from the U.S., both Russia and China might withdraw their support for Iran and leave the Islamic regime out in the cold. Meanwhile, Iran has to provide both countries with lucrative deals to compensate for their support.

The deal with the EU may not initially offer Iran a great deal. But in the long run, by convincing the Europeans that Iran is serious in not wishing to develop nuclear weapons, we can benefit a great deal more than by relying on Russia and China. Moreover the EU, particularly the U.K., has far more leverage over Washington than do Russia and China together.

The above was written by Sadegh Zibakalam, a political science professor at Tehran University and a recognized spokesman for the less radical, more internationalist faction in Iran. Appearing as it does in today’s Daily Star, the editorial offers other clues that the Rafsanjani faction, which in many ways represents the Iranian “establishment,” may be in the ascendancy thanks to a combination of US saber rattling and Ahmadinejad’s own miscalculations regarding the radicalization of Iranian society:

In contrast, the hard-liners, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, advocate a more hawkish approach to the country’s nuclear program. Initially, Ahmadinejad’s disapproval of the way the Iranian team had been negotiating with the Western powers was implicit, but he soon began criticizing the ex-negotiators very openly. Rouhani and his colleagues initially showed constraint and did not respond to Ahmadinejad’s criticisms; eventually however, they lost patience and replied.

They defended their tactics throughout the two years of negotiating with the EU-3, including the two-year voluntary freeze on the country’s enrichment program. The moderates further criticized Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel and the Holocaust. One reformist newspaper even went so far as to accuse Ahmadinejad of trying deliberately to provoke the U.S. Without naming the president, the newspaper wrote that “it appears that some of our leaders are trying to use the country’s nuclear issue as a tool to score points against the Great Satan. While every effort ought to be undertaken to alleviate U.S. fears about our nuclear program, some of our leaders are in fact behaving in exactly the opposite direction.” Ahmadinejad eventually replaced Rouhani with Ali Larijani.

The future of American-Iranian relations concerning Iran’s nuclear program depends in part on the outcome of the quiet struggle that is unfolding between hard-liners and moderates within the Iranian leadership.

Ahmadinejad’s cleansing of what he sees as “moderate” influences in the foreign service and the ministries did not sit well with the pragmatists who saw their main piplelines that enabled their power (not to mention cutting off their access to ill gotten gains; Rafsanjani is considered the richest man in Iran - not something one achieves on a government salary) closed off to them.

If Ahmadinejad has indeed proposed “new solutions” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, it had better be more than mere atmospherics. The issues between the US and Iran go far beyond nuclear weapons and having Tehran address their meddling in Iraq, their support for Hizbollah in Lebanon which is a major obstruction to democracy in that country, as well as their support for Hamas would seem to be a prerequisite before any serious rapprochement could happen.

I would hate to see this letter rejected out of hand. But given the Iranian President’s track record, I’m sure Washington will be extremely cautious about responding positively to anything Ahmadinejad has to say.

I have to admit to experiencing a case of extreme mandible depression after reading Hugh Hewitt this morning. Despite generic poll numbers that show people would prefer Darth Vader over a Republican when voting for a Congressional candidate, Hugh prefers to walk on the sunny side of the street, in effect saying “Aha! We’ve got those Democrats exactly where we want them!”

But with the rejection of the immigration approach favored by the Democrats and the mavericks, the appearance of some fiscal discipline among some senators, the slow but certain march towards the confirmation of future Judges Kavanaugh, Boyle, Haynes etc, the word that the White House will be back in the judicial nominations business very soon, and –most of all– the return of the war to the public’s consciousness because of Iran’s manifest aggressiveness on nukes and Israel and undeniable threats in Central and South America, suddenly the election if framed –again— as a choice between the serious though flawed party of victory, growth, and border security and the party of surrender, to both the jihadists abroad and the demands for amnesty now and again in the future at home.

There are undeniable signs of GOP renewal, in Senate races in Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Washington State, Montana and Missouri –and perhaps next week in Florida– as well as great candidates for governor in Blackwell in Ohio and Swann in Pennsyvlania.

I really wish I could share Mr. Hewitt’s usually infectious enthusiasm for Republican chances in November. I also wish I could fly but given my weight, lack of wings, and a scarcity of magic fairy dust, it looks like both wishes will, by necessity, be relegated to the realm of fantasy rather than coming true any time soon.

The facts are grim and getting grimmer. Leaving aside the President’s poll numbers (which should be largely irrelevant in an off year election held during an incumbent President’s second term), the shockingly low support for Republicans in Congress - only 25% think they are doing a “good job - along with dismal numbers for Republicans on the so-called “generic” ballot where the latest AP-Ipsos poll has Democrats outpolling the GOP by an almost historic 51%-34%, both point to extraordinary unease with Republicans running the House and the Senate.

This may not turn into the kind of disaster for Republicans the Democrats are hoping for. Then again, if the economy takes a turn for the worse or if there is another big scandal, or if gas prices top $4 a gallon, or if things start to go south in Iraq, the worry and disgust many voters are feeling at this point could result in a Democratic tidal wave that would swamp the GOP on election day.

Not a repeat of 1994 as the Dems are hoping for. The model would be 1974 where Watergate and disgust over the Viet Nam war gave the Democrats 54 more seats in the House.

The deadly combination of conservative Republicans staying home and an energized Democratic base may put in play more than the 30 or so seats most analysts are saying are at risk for Republicans. The definition of what constitutes a “competitive” house race is generally accepted as the incumbent receiving 55% or less of the vote in the previous comparable election cycle. But Democratic pollster Charlie Cook has pointed out if that “safe” number is raised to just 57%, it puts 20 more Republican seats at risk.

On the other hand, Mr. Hewitt has an answer to that scenario:

As Michael Barone has argued, the GOP voters just seem to keep turning out, despite their grumbling.

Bill Kristol has argued that 9/11 may have changed American politics far more than we know, and I suspect the president’s poll numbers –to the extent they are accurate– reflect not dismay with the war, but dismay with the Administration’s occasional appearance of placing priority on other than the war. Telling the American people that there is no substitute for victory in Iraq and firmness with Iran even to the point of confrontation is exactly the reassurance that serious people need. The president has been doing this for months, but he and his Administration have been helped in recent weeks by the appearance of the left’s venom and its effects on the Democratic leadership. The party is truly unhinged, and a vote for any Democrat will be a vote for defeat, and not just in Iraq.

Suddenly, the debate is back where it ought to be, on the war, judges, taxes, spending and also border security.

I don’t necessarily want to question either Mr. Barone’s or Mr. Kristol’s judgement, but frankly, I believe that both gentlemen are sipping from the same glass of kool aid. Turnout modeling is an inexact science (just ask the Democrats from 2004). This is especially true in “competitive” races where turnout can be affected by a wide variety of factors including local ballot issues, candidate personalities, and the local economy.

As for how our politics have changed since 9/11, I wrote this for the American Thinker back in June:

At bottom, the brouhaha about prisoner abuse, Koran flushing, puppet governments, Bush- lied-and-people-died-no-blood-for-oil-U.S.out-of-Iraq battle cries reveals a desperate desire on the part of many Americans – perhaps a majority – to wish away the harsh realities that the war in Iraq is exposing, and the monumental effort it will take to win this conflict and defeat the forces of ignorance, intolerance, and terror.

President Warren G. Harding used the phrase “return to normalcy” to describe a state of mind that existed in the United States prior to our entry in World War I. There was a reaction to America sullying her hands by taking part in what, at the time, was seen as part of the endless cycle of European self-immolative conflagrations that had flared up every hundred years or so. Harding thought it was high time America returned to a pre-war state of mind where, as his successor Calvin Coolidge so aptly put it, “the chief business of the American people is business,” and the only foreign entanglement worthy of our interest was trying to keep Latin America peaceful and beyond the clutches of European powers. Harding and Coolidge succeeded in making America forget its involvement in that war.

Republicans underestimate this yearning at their own peril. As I have stated on numerous occasions, the biggest mistake this President has made to date has been his failure to call on the American people for shared sacrifice in the prosecution of the war. As it stands today, the burden for fighting this war remains on the men and women in uniform who perform spectacularly day after day and on their families. Why should it surprise us that the American people would want to forget about a war in which they have no personal stake, no feeling of solidarity with each other and the brave men and women who are taking the struggle directly to our enemies?

The Democrats will seek to delegitimize the war if they do in fact, take control of the Congress in November:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House’s first-term energy task force and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned investigations, “You never know where it leads to.”

[...]

Pelosi also vowed “to use the power to investigate” the administration on multiple fronts, starting with the task force convened in secret by Vice President Cheney to devise the administration’s energy policy. The administration has successfully fought lawsuits since 2001 that sought to reveal the names of energy company executives tapped to advise the task force.

“Certainly the conduct of the war” in Iraq would be the subject of hearings, if not a full-fledged House investigation, Pelosi said. Another subject for investigation could be the use of intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to make the case for the 2003 invasion.

Hoyer added that he would like to see investigations into the extent of domestic wiretapping by the National Security Agency, and the billions of dollars wasted by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This shouldn’t be surprising either. After all, since most Democrats do not believe we are at war in the first place, (seeing the issue of national security a political weakness) they wish to make it virtually impossible for any future President to use force except as a response to an attack - say a nuke detonated in New York City. What good any kind of response would be at that point, the Democrats refuse to say.

Also, by returning to “the good old days” where we didn’t have to worry about silly things like terrorists in the United States plotting with their leaders overseas to kill mass numbers of us, the Democrats will feel perfectly comfortable in tooling back homeland security programs like the NSA intercept program, increased border security, and other measures implemented by the Bush Administration that they have labeled “excessive” or even “dictatorial.”

They will run on a platform that basically says 9/11 never happened. Or even if they acknowledge it, their only reason for doing so will be to criticize Republican efforts in response as “overreacting” to what happened that horrible day.

In this respect, I think Mr. Hewitt is tragically mistaken when he says that the American people are uneasy because the Administration has downplayed both the War on Terror as well as the threat from Iran. Despite 9/11, we are still an extraordinarily insular people and if these last few years prove anything, it is that Osama Bin Laden’s belief that we don’t have the staying power for a long war may prove prophetic if the Democrats ever achieve majority status.

Will a push by the Bush Administration to nationalize the election by making the war and terrorist threats the overriding issues save Republicans in November as Hugh seems to think it will? I would say to my friend be careful what you wish for. By nationalizing the election, other factors would come into focus that would play to the advantage of the Democrats including people’s feelings about this President which at the moment are as low as one can go without an impeachment trial. Even if conservatives come back to the fold, the fact that Democrats outpoll Republicans 3-1 among people who identify themselves as independents makes nationalizing any issues in this off year election extremely hazardous for Republicans.

I will be the first person to congratulate Hugh if his analysis proves prescient. But as it stands now, I have to wonder if Mr. Hewitt is letting his enthusiasm get the better of him when looking at what many other analysts see as sinking Republican chances in November.

Pity the poor lefties who have leapt upon the resignation of CIA Chief Porter Goss like a pack of ravenous beasts, hungry for scandal and scalps, all the while frantically trying their best to connect dots that may or may not exist only in their fevered imaginations.

In truth, I haven’t seen this much wild speculation on the left since the Jeff Gannon/Guckert episode when the primary question asked in all seriousness by liberals was “Who did Gannon sleep with at the White House in order to get a press pass?” At that time, the dots used to connect Mr. Gannon - a conservative by day and possible gay prostitute at night - to any number of White House big shots up to and including the President, were laid out in exacting patterns of irrefutable stupidity, an exercise in paranoia and wishful thinking so profoundly laughable as to make the entire episode a revelatory metaphor for Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The Goss resignation carries with it the potential for the same kind of out of control miasmic obscurance of the facts in order to advance a theory that may or may not hold any water. In this case, it is the tenuous connection of Mr. Goss to the scandale du jour involving disgraced ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham, his crony Brent Wilkes, and so called “hospitality suites” at the Watergate hotel where liquor and cigars mixed with poker and prostitutes in an all too familiar Washington combination that involved Congressmen and government bureaucrats engaging in the typical manly-man pursuits of bluffing, raising, and fixing federal contracts.

The fact that dozens of current and former Members of Congress as well as others in the defense establishment attended these soirees has much of official Washington playing the “Name that John” game. Beyond that, there is the serious matter of how Mr. Wilkes was able to win defense and intelligence contracts and whether the use of prostitutes constituted a bribe of federal contract officials.

The FBI seems to be zeroing in on one such contract let by the CIA for $2.1 million involving Wilkes’s company ACDS, Inc. and the #3 at the Agency, Porter Goss’s good friend Dusty Foggo. Mr. Foggo was promoted to his position of Executive Director (a post that oversees contracts for the Agency) when Goss was appointed DCIA following a stint as supervisor of CIA Iraq contracts, a not insignificant position but nevertheless, his elevation raised many eyebrows. The Agency’s Inspector General has begun a separate investigation of the Wilkes contract which is standard procedure when questions are raised by law enforcement officials about a CIA employee.

Mr. Foggo has admitted attending the Wilkes parties at the Watergate but has denied any wrongdoing. Goss has denied ever attending the parties.

And there you have the bare bones of a scandal that I’m sure will be busting out all over around Memorial Day if not sooner. It appears that Mr. Wilkes is cooperating with the FBI and that there may be records of which Congressmen took advantage of Mr. Wilkes’ hospitality via a limo service that could have a connection to the hookers.

Sounds juicy doesn’t it? The problem for the left is how to get beyond the denial of Porter Goss and prove him a liar. To that end, their basic logic goes something like this:

1. Foggo knew Wilkes.
2. Foggo likes to play poker and smoke cigars
3. Foggo partied with Wilkes.
4. Goss knew Foggo.
5. Goss likes to play poker and smoke cigars
6. Goss is a lying S.O.B.

And that’s pretty much it. In order to believe that Goss is embroiled in the Hookergate scandal (I prefer “Watergate Redux” myself) you have to believe that simply by virtue of his close association with Mr. Foggo and that he along with most of the male population of the United States likes to play poker and smoke cigars, he is a liar and guilty as sin.

I am in awe of the cyberian logic used by the left in this case, a clear cut example of jumping to conclusions based on something that probably isn’t there. After all, if Hookergate was indeed the reason for Goss being forced out, I hardly think the President would have taken the time to give him a White House sendoff. Those kind of images come back to haunt, something that I’m sure brand new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow would have been able to tell the President.

No, I like my first take on this yesterday; that it was White House politics that led to Goss’s suddent departure. The West Wing had decided to back Negroponte in his turf battles with the intel agencies which made Goss a nuisance and expendable to boot. Couple that with the whiff of scandal emanating from his close associate Mr. Foggo (which gave Goss’s enemies fuel for the fire when they use the same kind of innuendo employed by the left in this case) and you have a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for Goss’s departure. That, plus the fact that Mr. Goss himself probably wanted to leave sealed the deal.

Reading more than this into his resignation takes a certain kind of disassociation from reality that the “Reality Based Community” has justly become famous for.

From almost his first day as Director of the CIA, Porter Goss was in trouble with the intelligence establishment. Long time employees who had reached the zenith of their careers prior to 9/11 - especially in the clandestine services - and who were wedded to a culture that demanded very little and rewarded those playing it safe, were at first puzzled, then outraged at Goss’s reform measures. By all reports, those measures cost the agency dozens of senior managers whose expertise many of those left behind are saying will be sorely missed in the coming months and years as the United States is forced to deal with rogue states seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a continuing terrorist threat, and other challenges in Russia, China, and South America.

Indeed, Goss was not hired to “reform” the CIA as much as he was picked to grab it by the throat and shake it vigorously. But why? What kind of culture existed that needed shaking up in the first place?

The 9/11 Commission:

The CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence retained some of its original character of a university gone to war. Its men and women tended to judge one another by the quantity and quality of their publications (in this case, classified publications). Apart from their own peers, they looked for approval and guidance to policymakers. During the 1990s and today, particular value is attached to having a contribution included in one of the classified daily “newspapers”- the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief-or, better still, selected for inclusion in the President’s Daily Brief.76

The CIA had been created to wage the Cold War. Its steady focus on one or two primary adversaries, decade after decade, had at least one positive effect: it created an environment in which managers and analysts could safely invest time and resources in basic research, detailed and reflective. Payoffs might not be immediate. But when they wrote their estimates, even in brief papers, they could draw on a deep base of knowledge.

When the Cold War ended, those investments could not easily be reallocated to new enemies. The cultural effects ran even deeper. In a more fluid international environment with uncertain, changing goals and interests, intelligence managers no longer felt they could afford such a patient, strategic approach to long-term accumulation of intellectual capital. A university culture with its versions of books and articles was giving way to the culture of the newsroom.

Is it any wonder these guys missed 9/11? Or the India and Pakistan nuke tests of 1998? Or any one of a number of other intelligence flops, failures, and missteps along the road to war with Iraq?

The fact is, the CIA does not foster a results oriented culture. Again, the 9/11 Commission:

Yet at least for the CIA, part of the burden in tackling terrorism arose from the background we have described: an organization capable of attracting extraordinarily motivated people but institutionally averse to risk, with its capacity for covert action atrophied, predisposed to restrict the distribution of information, having difficulty assimilating new types of personnel, and accustomed to presenting descriptive reportage of the latest intelligence. The CIA, to put it another way, needed significant change in order to get maximum effect in counterterrorism. President Clinton appointed George Tenet as DCI in 1997, and by all accounts terrorism was a priority for him. But Tenet’s own assessment, when questioned by the Commission, was that in 2004, the CIA’s clandestine service was still at least five years away from being fully ready to play its counterterrorism role. And while Tenet was clearly the leader of the CIA, the intelligence community’s confederated structure left open the question of who really was in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence effort.

And while it is true that the end “product” of intelligence analysis is necessarily vague and full of qualifiers, the fact is that by all reports, the analyses on the terrorist threat, on al Qaeda, on Bin Laden, and now on Iran have been uniformly poor thanks to a watering down process that occurs between those whose job it is to analyze these threats and those whose job is preparing and presenting the intelligence product to policymakers.

The 9/11 Commission calls this effort “playing it safe.” In any large bureaucracy - in the public or private sector - one does not advance their career by going against the grain or thinking outside the box. What this means specifically for the Agency is that lower level analysts who work long hours consuming massive amounts of raw intelligence have their analyses picked over and shaped by more senior managers in order to have them conform to Agency thinking. Couple this with a shocking disdain held by many of these managers for the policymakers and elected officials who consume their end product and you have a recipe for failure.

This is the culture that Porter Goss was hired to shake up. According to many, he not only went about it the wrong way but demoralized the Agency in the process:

Porter J. Goss was brought into the CIA to quell what the White House viewed as a partisan insurgency against the administration and to re-energize a spy service that failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks or accurately assess Iraq’s weapons capability.

But as he walked out the glass doors of Langley headquarters yesterday, Goss left behind an agency that current and former intelligence officials say is weaker operationally, with a workforce demoralized by an exodus of senior officers and by uncertainty over its role in fighting terrorism and other intelligence priorities, said current and former intelligence officials

[...]

“Now there’s a decline in morale, its capability has not been optimized and there’s a hemorrhaging of very good officers,” Brennan said. “Turf battles continue” with other parts of the recently reorganized U.S. intelligence community “because there’s a lack of clarity and he had no vision or strategy about the CIA’s future.” Brennan added: “Porter’s a dedicated public servant. He was ill-suited for the job.”

The above is quoted from Dana Priest’s largely one sided article in today’s Post. But even friendly Republicans on the Intelligence Committees echo the criticism that Goss didn’t appear to have an overall strategic goal for the Agency, that he delegated too much to his aides. In this respect, it could be that Goss was not tasked with long term planning as much as he was put in place to rock the boat and see who fell off. In the proudly independent operations directorate, he appears to have had the most “success” at least from the standpoint of fulfilling his goal of turning the culture inside out. Estimates of early retirees from the ranks of overseas postings are between 30 and 90 Station Chiefs as well as other top level operations employees.

Of course, it was no secret that one of the major reason Goss was hired was to ferret out leakers and, as much as possible, put a stop to efforts by active duty personnel to undermine Administration policy on the Iraq War:

Goss’s counterinsurgency campaign was so crudely executed by his top lieutenants, some of them former congressional staffers, that they drove out senior and mid-level civil servants who were unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated, some intelligence officers and outside experts said.

“The agency was never at war with the White House,” contended Gary Berntsen, a former operations officer and self-described Republican and Bush supporter who retired in June 2005. “Eighty-five percent of them are Republicans. The CIA was a convenient scapegoat.”

Perhaps a couple of different perspectives on the idea that “The agency was never at war with the White House” would be in order:

The Daily Telegraph 10/10/04:

A powerful “old guard” faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such “viciousness and vindictiveness” in a battle between the White House and the agency.

John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: “When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences.”

The Wall Street Journal 9/29/04:

Then there’s the book by “Anonymous,” a current CIA employee who has been appearing everywhere to trash U.S. policy, with the approval of agency higher-ups. And now we have one Paul R. Pillar, who has broken his own cover as the author of a classified National Intelligence Estimate this summer outlining pessimistic possibilities for the future of Iraq.

That document was also leaked to the New York Times earlier this month, and on Monday columnist Robert Novak reported that it had been prepared at the direction of Mr. Pillar, the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Mr. Novak reported that Mr. Pillar identified himself as such during an off-the-record gathering last week and, while denying he leaked the document, accused the Bush Administration of ignoring the CIA’s prewar speculation about the consequences of war with Iraq. Others have since confirmed the thrust of the Novak report.

Keep in mind that none of these CIA officials were ever elected to anything, and that they are employed to provide accurate information to officials who present their policy choices for voter judgment. Yet what the CIA insurgents are essentially doing here, with their leaks and insubordination, is engaging in a policy debate. Given the timing of the latest leaks so close to an election, they are now clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry. Yet somehow the White House stands accused of “politicizing” intelligence?

Former NSA Chief Admiral Bobby Inman:

I was utterly appalled during the 2004 election cycle at the number of clearly politically motivated leaks from intelligence organizations — mostly if not all from CIA — that appeared to me to be the most crass thing I had ever seen to influence the outcome of an election. I never saw it quite as harsh as it was. And clearing books to be published anonymously — there was no precedent for it. I started getting telephone calls from CIA retirees when Bush appointed Negroponte, talking about how vindictive the administration was in trying to punish CIA, and I was again sort of dismayed by the effort to play politics including with information that was classified. What is the impact on younger workers who see the higher-ups engaged in this kind of leaking

Clearly, Priest and other reporters are downplaying the idea today that there ever was a conflict between the CIA and the White House and if there was, it was the fault of the White House. This idea is not supported by the facts. The tensions between the two factions were real and leaking done immediately prior to the 2004 election was unprecedented from a supposedly non-partisan Agency. One might argue that opposition to the Iraq War may not have been a partisan issue within the Agency. But leaking a classified pre-war analysis two days before the first Presidential debate that showed the Administration had been “warned” about the unstable post-war environment in Iraq could have one purpose and one purpose only; to hurt the President politically. If there is another definition of partisanship, I’d like to hear it.

If some senior and mid-level civil servants were “unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated,” are they saying that Goss didn’t even have the right to ask that question? This would be ridiculous given the circumstances. Perhaps it says more about the egos of these men and women than it does about Goss himself that they resigned.

Porter Goss will not be remembered kindly by those in the CIA who are left behind. But if he was able to shake the agency up so that the next Director can actually build what the American people deserve - the best intelligence agency in the world - then he would have fulfilled a valuable purpose.