[lbo-talk] Juan Cole on Rumsfeld's memo

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 4 07:55:27 PST 2006


Doug:

Rumsefeld's memo was arrogant and callous, for sure, but it's still at odds with the admin's public stance. And it makes you wonder - who's leaking this stuff to the NYT? First the Hadley memo fucks up the meeting with Maliki, and now this. It has to be someone inside the admin - these things don't circulate that widely, do they?

...............

After the towers fell and the Bush administration's whirlwind project to re-make the 21st century in the image of the 19th got underway at full speed -- in other words, after their intentions became dazzlingly clear -- embarrassing and incriminating information started to leak from various US government agencies.

Why is this happening?

The simplest explanation (and the one Seymour Hersh has offered up when discussing his sources for CIA, NSA and DoD insider information) is that professionals within these organizations -- true believers in the stated missions of their agencies -- are, like the JAGs who've spoken against the procedures used at Gitmo, disturbed by what they've seen and heard and are trying to let the rest of us know the scope of the problem.

Of course, from the point of view of most us here (including me) a CIA employee who thinks her agency is doing Heaven's work is misguided at best. Still, these leaks have been quite useful.

There's something else to consider...

No doubt, the Bush administration, fond as it is of a carpet bombing approach to governance, has made many enemies within elite circles. In ancient Rome, the praetorians might have eliminated this obstacle to imperial efficiency and placed a stuttering writer on the throne. Here in the US, adversaries work to ruin the reputations of their enemies via leaks.

.d.

Let us weep in somber contemplation of the scientific and brutal destiny of the Greek brothers.

...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/



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