Personally, I was not looking for what the pundits said. I drew my own conclusions, but I consider myself a pretty informed individual. It can be interesting though for people to debate each other and then that can produce the weaknesses and strengths of each side of the debate. Blogs, a political forum, message boards are all good places to discuss the issues and become more informed on them.

-roger

Commonsense is a commodity that seems to be in relatively short supply and the ability of policy makers and those who supply the policy makers ability to filter those facts which do not fit the conceptions of decision makers is frightening.

Its a shame that intelligence is required to provide a pro-con report for all intelligence with the officers being responsible for their analysis.

This doesn’t happen now and it will not as long as risk taking and initiative are required. And in bureaucracies it is never about how many you get right, its about what you get wrong, hence screwed up estimates that are rarely on the mark or even close to it.

Matthew Yglesias responds to Gideon Rose’s critique of the netroots critique on the foreign policy community (discussed here). The highlights: Rose would, I think, like to make this a conversation about expertise and professionalism. But I’m not, and…