I guess we have to look at the legacy. The Emancipation and the end of slavery in the United States of America - something alluded to, but put off until 1808 or afterwards, in the Constitution - versus Iraq and Katrina. I doubt that even after a century and a half, Iraq will ever prove to be on a par with Emancipation. Certainly Katrina never will be. The failure to deal with the tidal flood of illegal immigration is not exactly stellar either.

Frankly when I see a picture of George W. Bush from the past eight years… it’s nauseating. He was our president??? Honestly, it’s a very bad memory that I’d almost rather forget.

Not that Obama is therefore going to be wonderful. But Bush II was the PITS.

Perhaps he can play dumb on the Iraq War, and get away with it. But Cheney should have been arrested for driving the campaign to leak Plame’s identity. You say that Wilson and Plame played loose with her NOC status - show me then where they did that, please, and don’t just refer to vague and bogus reports on the internet. If you check, you will find that yes, she was known to be his wife, but no, she was not known to be an NOC CIA spy. If you look at the picture of them in the car… you would not recognize her, first of all, and secondly, so what? It’s all a bunch of grasping at straws. “Oh he shows her in his car, so it was no secret that she is a NOC CIA spy!” So if you see a picture of me with a girlfriend in a car, then therefore she must be some NOC CIA spy? The CIA needs to know about that! And you know, if they had let that out, they would have been arrested and all that, because they had signed agreements too, just like Armitage. And Cheney swore an oath.

You will find disinformation about the yellowcake deal too. People love to say “OH! Wilson said there was no deal - but look! There was yellowcake in Iraq!” Yes there was, under UN seal since the early 90s, and known since before Desert Storm because it was from Saddam’s old nuclear program. It was NOT obtained by Iraq in the late 90s or early 00s, it was from the 80s when the USA still supported Saddam.

A pack of lies, that’s what we got from Cheney and his entourage, and it’s what we still get from his supporters to this day.

Cheney deliberately ignored all evidence, and when Wilson spoke up, the swaggering Cheney clobbered him for his audacity. Cheney should go to jail for a very long time.

As for your Fitzgerald thing, let me dissent with all due respect. If it comes out at some point that specific laws were truly broken, then let justice take its due course. I suspect that there are plenty of people out there looking into that right now. Tough row to hoe, however. You first have to separate the right of an administration to make policy from the actual violation of law — never an easy thing to do and usually very arbitrary. I have to surmise that your use of the word “tricking” means they misled us in the process of making and seeking public approval for policy. Well, if prevarication in public statements were a crime, most of our politicians might merit winding up in the slammer for something or other. And how, in a legal sense, can you distinguish prevarication from claims of interpretation of intelligence? Neither Joe Wilson’s report nor the embassy reporting on the yellowcake carried a legal aspect requiring acceptance. The President apparently rejected them. That’s within his power. Mistake? Perhaps. Crime? No. In the end, it is up to us, the voters, in this political system to separate the wheat from the chaff and mete out political punishment where appropriate. Looks like the nation did that on 4 November. Now we’ll see if our assessments were correct.

We have to be very careful, in my opinion, not to let justice be mixed up with our political assessments. I must say, quite frankly, that your own expressed sentiments tell me that you have decided to hold Cheney et al guilty even before any investigation takes place. I fully understand where those feelings may be coming from and I respect them; but I must caution that, in my view, this is not the best starting point for an investigator. Suspecting the possibility of guilt is one thing. But we do not want to be so dedicated to that proposition that we start focusing only on one set of clues and shove aside any exculpatory evidence. All I can say for now is that neither you nor I have the real evidence at this moment to label anyone as a criminal as opposed to a bad policy maker. This includes both the issue of the Iraq war and the Plame affair (Armitage excepted — I tend to agree with you for now on that one, except if we find out that Plame and Wilson played fast and loose with her NOC cover, of which there are reports out there to that effect). If, in the end, your sentiments prove to be the right ones, I will be the first to raise my glass and toast your prescience.

One final point is that we do not want to start a tradition of detesting so much the policies of an administration that we wind up threatening outgoing administrations with retaliatory criminal prosecution and jail time. That can start us down the road to becoming a banana republic in which every transition becomes problematical, eventually with bayonets involved. In that scenario, Abe Lincoln himself, had he lived, could have been prosecuted for temporarily waiving habeas corpus and exiling the leader of the anti-war Democrat Copperheads without a trial. U.S. Grant would likely be in the same boat because of the corruption of his underlings. And how about old FDR, again if he had lived, for placing Japanese-Americans in the equivalent of POW camps. You don’t want to start down that road. Soon no one will want the highest offices except those who think they can keep them by superior force. Nixon was probably the most transparent violator of the law in our history. Ford pardoned him at great political risk, largely because we are not in the habit of sending our ex-Presidents and ex-Veeps to jail. As I recall, not even Aaron Burr suffered that, and he was alleged to have committed treason!

As for your frequent references to Bush II’s jokes in the midst of crisis, I suggest you read the writings of Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln. Chase was fit to be tied because, during cabinet meetings to discuss critical war issues, Lincoln would frequently tell a funny story. Chase thought that this was an abominable trait on the part of Lincoln in the midst of a civil war in which troops were dying like flies and the nation’s finances were extremely rocky. Personally, I don’t see where Chase’s criticism had much effect on Lincoln’s legacy.

What I would really like to do is work for Patrick Fitzgerald, and nail every one of the guilty parties from that administration. I was frankly disappointed that Fitzgerald was not waiting outside to arrest former Vice President Richard B. Cheney when he stepped out of the hall of executive privilege last month, now that Bush could not pardon him any more. The high crimes of tricking our nation into a war, and of betraying a NOC CIA officer simply in order to confuse the issue for his own convenience, are still within the Statute of Limitations.

All that said, it has been a pleasure blogging with you on these subjects. Even from a distance, you appear to be someone who knows how to debate a subject without throwing in a lot of invective aimed at your interlocutor. The result is that I am led to respect your personal opinions more than I would the opinions of many another. Therefore, I encourage you, if at all possible, to run for some office so that you can apply your obviously high standards to our governance. If you are a resident of PWC, I would suggest starting with the school board. If there is anyplace that appears to need a boot in the pants concerning the role of citizens in governance…….

I have never seen the embassy reports. I saw them referenced in the Senate Select Committee report. The point is that somebody in the Bush administration - and Bush did not have the brains to do this, so it must have been Cheney - completely misrepresented all intelligence, in order to trick us into the Iraq War. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, were all PNAC signatories, the PNAC specitifally looking to use US military force in the middle east. The truth is self evident: they stacked the deck, and they got their war. Only it did not work out as they had planned.

Thousands of US troops killed, many more thousands wounded, and more driven half crazy by the heavy rotation, and now breaking records for suicides. And they want us out… The deficit rising from 50 to 60 billion dollars a month, and then boom, the economic collapse, and then the deficit rising to 100 billion a month, and no doubt rising from there, and now a new president has taken office.

Bush, a great president? No way. I rank him as one of the all-time worst.

I will, however, give you my initial personal reaction to Joe Wilson’s endeavors in Niamey. There seems to me to have been a whole lot of presumption that Wilson was a so-called “Africa hand” and thereby a natural to send to Niger…as if he had been in Niger for years and had an entire stable of contacts and friends who would supply him with the truth for old time’s sake. Balderdash, I would conjecture. Recognize that Wilson served in Niamey from 1976 to 1978, approximately a quarter century before the yellow cake affair. Moreover, he was the General Services Officer or GSO. Know what a GSO does? He’s somewhat the equivalent of a super in a large apartment building, only his apartment building is the US Embassy and allied US agencies. An important and critical job, especially in developing countries; but he is not a political officer or an economic/commercial officer. Those people are trained and very focused on their jobs, which even I will admit can be very tough ones, especially in the Third World, where you are usually viewed with much suspicion and apprehension when you show up seeking the truth. I have seen these guys work up close. Damned hard and often frustrating job in many cases. People usually try to avoid telling you the truth because, if such willingness to blab is ever found out by those above you, your career could be smoke real quick. Maybe even more than your career.

From what I can see, Wilson appears to me to have been in State’s admin cone until 1982, when he became DCM in Bujumbura and later in Brazzaville. That, in my personal estimation, would have been the first time he actually got involved in the job of political and economic reporting. I have to presume that he did a pretty good job, especially because he got promoted to the DCM job in Baghdad… a whole different kettle of fish. His reward was obviously a subsequent promotion to the ambassadorial ranks.

When I look at that in its totality, I think many people have missed a key point on the yellowcake affair. Wilson came into Niamey essentially cold. He was reportedly told by the US Ambassador that the embassy had already debunked the yellowcake report but that Wilson would be set up with appointments to further his own, independent investigation. In assessing the validity of the yellowcake report, I personally would have jumped immediately on the contents of that embassy reporting. It was done presumably by the pros on the ground at the time with a whole array of on-going contemporary contacts. I would have put much more emphasis on that reporting than on anything Wilson could pick up during his essentially one-shot deal. Imagine walking into that situation, even with the rank of retired ambassador, and asking national officials if anyone there had violated UN sanctions by selling yellowcake to the Iraqis. You think they are all going to jump up and confess and then provide you with the damning evidence of the bill of sale? If you think that, you don’t know diddleysquat about the Third World. My big question even now is: Where is that embassy report and what did it say? I just haven’t had the time to search for it. I don’t even know whether the essential contents were ever released publically or in court. If you have located it or a version of it, let me know. I’d like to read it just out of curiosity.

I’m not going to go further into this thing. Sort a curse of the profession in a way. Yes, I know fuill well what those security agreements are like. Boy, do I know. They literally follow you to the end of your days. You tempt me far too much, Bob, with your willingness to engage in a mature debate. So, I will now take the more prudent course and zip my lip.

Keep in mind, the supposed first leaker Richard Armitage was another PNAC signatory. Just because he worked under Powell did not mean he was a dove. Why wasn’t he prosecuted? It’s the unaccountable ruling class in action again. If it had been me, I would have been in jail in about two days. Have you ever seen the security agreements they sign? Libby’s was released in his trial.

How much money was lost, and how many people died, and how much critical intelligence was lost, because of that malicious leak? All to hide the fact that the claim, a major one, of Iraqi attempts to acquire yellowcake uranium ore, was flat out false. And nobody asks who put that claim back into Bush’s speech, after George Tenet got it removed. Bush, of course, just read what they gave him. A great president? I really don’t think so.

And how about the big-mouthed Bush administration leak while British intelligence was chasing terrorists around Leeds, about a year before 7/7? It forced a sudden roundup by the Brits, and they missed a few, and as far as I am concerned it probably opened the door to 7/7 in the process.

Bottom line, the Bush II administration was no boon to US national security. We have been lucky, just as we were lucky for more than eight years after the first WTC attack in 1993.

None of us can really judge the full extent his martyrdom would have on al-Qaeda; but I must say that current radical movements in the Middle East worship and even thrive on martyrdom far more than any I have ever seen on my watch. This terrorist movement is far different than anything we have ever faced, especially in its willingness to accept operational suicide or certain death. It seems as if they, unlike virtually any other terrorist group in my experience, seldom even figure into their plans an escape route if an operation goes awry. And I feel that many of them do not view “justice” as we do but, rather, as just another form of personal martyrdom. If we absolutely do not have to do it at this moment, why go to the trouble of testing those waters right now? Let’s kick the pants off his al Qaeda troops first and use him to mop up the floor afterwards.

As for capturing him alive and putting him on trial under current conditions, I still maintain that we would be creating some very dangerous circumstances for Americans and our allies living or traveling abroad. I myself would avoid going abroad in those circumstances. These people have no mercy whatsoever. They will do anything to achieve their objective. And, as good as our military and counterterrorist forces may be at the moment, there are simply not enough of them to provide the protection that would be needed, even with the cooperation of foreign allies. Again, in my honest opinion, it is something we do not absolutely have to do at this juncture in the battle. In effect, as a wise , old veteran once told me in a similar situation: “The battle is already difficult enough. Be careful that you do not do something which makes it even harder, especially if your action, as desireable as it may look on the surface, can be delayed until a better moment.” He was right. As I later understood very well, the action I had wanted to take at that time would have placed a lot of hitherto untouched and innocent people in imminent danger when they did not have to be and when I would be unable to protect them adequately.

Having said all of the above, I can fully understand the emotional side of the issue. I must confess that the same emotion has tugged at me more than once. It is just that a part of my former job was realizing that, if you make a tactical misjudgement, you somehow wind up believing within your own mind that a certain amount of the resulting blood is on your own hands, even though your intentions were the best. At this point, we have probably exhausted the issue between us. Obama will do what he feels he must do about Bin Laden. When that happens, we will probably be at the debate again.

As far as your last paragraphs goes, one could well look at the both of us as blood brothers in an unacceptable situation. Just simply as an American citizen and apart from my former profession, I have been absolutely disheartened by what seems to be an almost total inability on our part to influence what you term the “unaccountable ruling class.” I don’t think we two are alone out there in feeling that a huge gap has opened between the rulers and the ruled no matter what political party is involved. We just had a campaign in which one of the candidates touted the word “change.” Nice word. But then I look at the way the bailouts are being handled; what is in the stimulus package; the Daschle nomination and the automatic discounting of his tax problems, et al, and I still feel far distanced from what is going on only a few miles from me. Quite frankly, Bob, I do not know what the Hell to do to get us out of this, short of my fantasy of going into D.C., hauling every last one of those politicos out of their posh offices, banning them from the capital foreover, and trying to find some way to start over within the guiding limits of our Constitution. I’m an ageing old veteran of many wars in uniform and in mufti. I am just hoping that, somewhere out there in blogland, is a smart young man or woman who comes up with an idea that works.

The argument that bin Laden is untouchable because he would be a martyr does not hold water, in my view. It argues for the validity of Che Guevera T-shirt politics. Yes, I know there are noises of religious fervor and such, but that really means nothing. Bottom line, those who bin Laden’s death would unite in hate against us, are already united in hate against us. We should have gotten bin Laden, and although they hate us they would always hesitate, because they saw the risk of swift and certain justice. As it is now, they certainly do not.

Bush II’s policies were nonsense. How can we talk about national security, when we do almost nothing to enforce immigration law? And Obama is no better in that regard - in fact, the E-Verify holdup indicates that he may even be worse, if that is possible. Money does not talk, it swears… it screams “Keep them illegal to keep them cheap, but keep them coming!” And our government obeys. Cheap labor trumps national security every time, and that shows what is really important to our ruling class.

It is odd that I would use a Marxist term to describe them, but that’s how it is - they are an unaccountable ruling class, and they break every law that they impose on us. And we are in such a sorry condition that we either support and re-elect them, or we fail to re-elect them, after allowing our parties to nominate and select them, without pushing for important things to be clearly stated in the party platforms. In the end, I think that the problem is us, for failing to push back against the destructive agendas of our so-called leaders. We stand and stare like cattle, don’t we.

That kind of approach, when you use it every day of your life, eventually colors the way in which you address a lot of other issues. I do not know at this point how I can convince you that I am not among those who “idolize” George W. Bush. Especially on the illegal immigration issue, I could not agree with you more. My own neighborhood and my hometown have long been suffering under the results of the illegal immigration assault, and I myself have had to join the battle using the skills I once exercised on another battlefield in order to lend a contemporary hand to law enforcement. In that process, I have been heard to carry out public and private tongue lashings of GWB which would make a nun run in panic for her rosary beads. I do not disagree with you at all on that issue. I believe the problem is one of a socio-economic disaster in the making. I also believe, based on my past experience, that it is a major counterterrorist mistake — not just a lapse ( I admit I shouldn’t have used that word) or just one of GWB’s failures, but a major mistake that could really hurt us. But it is not a failure on the part of GWB alone. It is a failure perpetrated by a large number of people on the Hill from both parties; the current President; a large part of the business community thinking only of personal profit; a large number of people who cannot distinguish between the good effects of legal immigration and the bad effects of illegal immigration; and, rather frankly, a large swath of American citizens who just sit on their behinds and do not make a stink about it because it has not yet touched them personally (or so they think). In sum, we are on the same page here. No doubt about it.

When I look at the GWB administration, I tend to look at the individual pieces as well as the whole puzzle. I do not condemn en masse. One (I repeat: one) of the pieces which I deem to be a positive is the leadership he demonstrated in revitalizing the counterterrorist assets at home and abroad to engage in a full-throttle battle against al-Queda in the field. I base this assessment on my own long experience in such a battle under a variety of leadership conditions.

Nope, GWB was not some kind of invincible King Arthur in this battle. He made mistakes at various times. I, too, wonder what happened at the highest levels in the eight or nine months leading up to 9/11. Having been among the troops, I can pick out just through open sources where things went wrong at the ground level — including the absolutely disastrous effects of the Clinton “Wall of Separation.” I do not recall for sure at which point that wall was tumbled in a de facto as well as de jure fashion. If I had been in GWB’s shoes, I would have killed it on Day One. But I have been a counterterroist warrior. GWB was not. And I have to consider that counterterrorism was not the only issue in front of an incoming president. That was not an ordinary transition by any means. But, at this point, what can you or I do? The mechanisms to fight terrorism (all except the southern border issue, which seems to be a loss for us no matter who handles it at the top these days) are now in place. My feeling is that we have to leave the months leading up to 9/11 for the historians to sort out unless we want to get an ulcer by continually dwelling on it.

Since writing the previous post, I have been ruminating over ways to give you a more acute and unclassified flavor of the diffrence in field leadership between my division II (Clinton) and division III (Bush II). This may be it. If you will think back to the USS Cole incident under Clinton. After that attack, FBI investigators were dispatched to Yemen to try to track down those who had planned and executed the attack. When they got there, they were told by the US Ambassador (a Clinton appointee) that she did not want them there investigating the case because, in her opinion, it would harm her conduct of bilateral relations with the Yemeni government. So the FBI investigators were withdrawn, despite the fact that we had a capital warship with a huge hole in its side and 16 dead American sailors. My own field experience tells me that the Ambassador would not have taken such a stance of her own volition. She was most certainly in direct consultation with State and, through State, with the White House. This was a front page incident, not just a minor attack that would escape press attention. It appears to me that the top level decision was to retreat, just like we retreated out of Somalia after the Black Hawk incident.

Contrast that with an incident which took place not too long ago under the GWB administration. Known al-Qaeda terrorists were spotted by reconnaissance driving from time to time in a car down a certain road in Yemen. One day, poof!! They and the car disappeared in a cloud of fire and smoke. They were hit by a missile from one of our drones flying over Yemen. That, my friend, constitutes a sea change of policy that can come only from the very top. In my opinion and from my own experience, there is not a man or woman in our counterterrorist services who would have dared to launch such an attack in a foreign country without the express approval of the top “decider” in Washington. The same goes for those rockets now being sent into Pakistani territory when an al-Qaeda target is sighted and verified by reconnaisance. In my book, that shows a big difference in the level and type of engagement at the very top, and I am more than willing to give GWB credit for that, despite all the other things for which I would withhold such credit. (There may also be a bit of jealousy here. There were times when I could have used one of those drones, I tell you.)

I know I am going long on this, but there is one other important issue brought up by you (and Obama during the campaign) which merits attention: Bin Laden in hiding. The area is being watched by reconnaissance. If he is still alive and shows himself, a drone missile could well take him out. That is one thing. But what if you do capture him alive? He is no longer a Napoleon Bonaparte directing the placement and movement of troops at Austerlitz or Jena. He is pretty well isolated. He is now mostly a symbol, an icon, if you will. Capture and execute him for his crimes as a measure of “closure” for 9/11 and you will create a martyr of both political and radical religious dimensions which will outshadow anything in the cult of Che Guevara. Jail him? You do that and you had better pray for all those Americans out their in foreign fields as diplomats, businessmen, missionaries, oil company workers, tourists, and anything else. They may be plucked up and held as hostages against the release of the leader. Refuse and we may be presented periodically with the severed head of an American man, woman, or child as a further reminder of the issue at hand.

Don’t believe it? Check with the news coming out of the African Sahel. In North Africa, the “Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Mahgreb” is not only setting off bombs but also kidnapping or murdering European tourists. Now we discover that two ranking Canadian/UN diplomats and four European tourists in the Sahel below the Sahara have been kidnapped and taken into the desert, kidnapped apparently by nomadic Touareg raiders armed with automatic firepower. The last time I looked at it a few days ago, UN, US, and Canadian investigators were opining that the raiders may have turned over the victims to other radical Islamic groups in close alliance with Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Mahgreb. Grab Bin Laden and hold him and you may wish to turn in your passport. And how would you like it if he was put into a jail near you now that Gitmo is being closed?

As previously stated, my personal preference right now is to let him rot in his cave and die of natural causes. He can’t control the battle very well from there. He’s known to have medical difficulties, if he is not already dead from them. If we can’t get him from the air, we are going to have to send troops into a very difficult mountainous battlefield. Those troops would move with the most determined and suicidal of al-Qaeda in front of them and the resurgent Taliban ranging around behind them in a country which is known for frustrating foreign”invaders” throughout the centuries. This “closure” we always seek is nice; but, in my opinion, that old bastard in his cave is not by himself worth the life of one single American soldier. We shed the blood to get him, and they get to have the martyr of all martyrs. I’m not privilege to U.S. policy decisions but I have sometimes wondered if this might not be the thinking behind the Bush lack of a direct effort. I also wonder if Obama might eventually adopt the same strategy, at least unitl we may be able to clean out the Taliban again.

I ask Greg to forgive me for taking up so much blog space, but Bob Bruhns appears to be someone interested in serious and amicable debate and deserves to have a response.

“sanbo [sic] is just as powerful as nigger, depending on the part of the country you are from

Not in the US, dude.”

You black? Don’t tell me how I feel, DUDE.

The flag comment link is pretty asinine, Greg. I guess nobody gives a damn here. It’s fine with me if no one can post comments anymore. I would worry about Both Parties though, he might OD on the chocolate milk without a distraction.

Google search on ”CNN.com - Woman with altered passport detained - Jul 28, 2004″:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=CNN.com+-+Woman+with+altered+passport+detained+-+Jul+28%2C+2004&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

Now on top of those things, I remind you of that immigration law nonsense. Bush-II did very little to deal with illegal presence in the country from 9/11 onward, witness the situation we have today. Only at the very end of his administeration was E-Verify rolled out, just in time to be scuttled by the incoming Obama administration. I submit that Bush II was playing by the same rulebook as Clinton and Bush I and Reagan: “Keep them illegal, to keep them cheap - and keep them coming.” Law was not to be enforced. Oh, now and then 600 here, 100 there… while 12 to 20 million other illegal aliens slip right by.

You wrote about inappropriate divisions… so, what about the division that exists to this day, where the IRS and the Social Security Agency can not inform the Justice Department about all of the bogus Social Security numbers in use, etc? In over seven years since 9/11… nothing was done about that, Wolverine. Nothing. Do you call this national security?

And when a woman on the terrorist watchlist slipped across the border from Mexico and got caught with an altered South African passport trying to get onto a domestic flight, the story was quietly buried. Oh, you can find it… if someone points you to the links.

Google Search on ‘Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed’
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Farida+Goolam+Mohamed+Ahmed&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

CNN.com - Woman with altered passport detained - Jul 28, 2004
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/07/28/texas.border.arrest/

AP: Terrorists obtain S. Africa passports
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/28/content_352358.htm

I submit that this has everything to do with cheap labor for business interests that in my view should not be considered American, and nothing whatsoever to do with US national security.

Bush was a sock puppet for Dick Cheney and the PNAC. Please don’t idolize him. He sold us out like the others did, for cheap labor for his benefactors. He laughed while soldiers were dying in his false war on essentially nonexisitant WMD. (”No WMD here. No WMD there.”) He joked about Trent Lott’s porch, as if that was the extent of the trouble, while people were dying in Katrina. When will the hero worship cease?

Not in the US, dude.

I think you have to approach this question of responsibility and leadership with an understanding first of all that counterterrorism operations in this country over the past 25 years or so have not been on some sort of solid continuum. This I will give you from the perspective of the troops on the ground. There are three rather distinct divisions: (I) mid-Reagan to the end of the Bush I term; (II) the beginning of the Clinton era to 9/11; and (III) 9/11 to the Present.

I will readily concede that mistakes may have been made by Bush and his administration during the first nine months before 9/11. Where I differ with you and others is that I believe Bush should be give credit for his actions after 9/11 and that it was not just “unadulterated luck” and/or solely the work of the troops on the ground which have kept us safe. Each of those divisions above are so demarcated because they represent the effects of leadership from the top on performance below. I tell you this because I saw a great deal of it firsthand. Contrary to the attitudes which developed out of the early Cold War period and the J. Edgar Hoover era, our agencies of today are not rogue elephants thrashing around the jungle on their own. They listen to, respond to, and obey the guy at the top. Unfortunately, for reasons which you will understand, I have to broad brush some this without going into great detail. But, anyway, here goes.

Division I: Reagan directly inspired and demanded this. The counterterrorist capabilities of several major agencies were consolidated for the first time ever. Staffed differently and specifically directed and empowered, they were for the first time able to function out of the normal patterns of operational control. And they were given the tools and designated funds to accomplish this. They drew in personnel of all different talents and skills who were dedicated totally to this battle. One directive was to break down the informal wall that had long existed between agencies; and, difficult as this proved to be, an effort in this direction was begun. Bush I continued this era until the end of his term. To use a play on an old saying, Reagan-Bush I, in effect, unleashed the dogs of the counterterrorism war. I am not at liberty to say more, but I will assure you that those “dogs” did some things that would surprise the heck out of you.

Division II: During the Clinton era, the curtain started coming down almost from the very start. In the first instance, Clinton was preoccupied with domestic and other issues and, in the opinion of many, paid inadequate attention to the intelligence apparatus. I don’t know what was going through his mind at the time. But he was notorious, for example, for NOT meeting on a regular basis with his intelligence chiefs. In my opinion, and without going into detail, one of the policies he implemented directly from the top resulted in a severe handicapping of the troops because it ended one of their most logical tools for penetrating terrorist or other groups in the search for human intelligence. That and a host of other directives which I cannot explain on a blog affected morale and effectiveness. One was the so-called “Wall of Separation.’ which was discussed at the 9/11 hearings. Once again the various federal agencies which had only just begun to cooperate productively against the terrorist threat were atomized, this time not by tradition but by law. The troops on the ground still tried hard and gave it what they could. But the upshot of all this was that morale sank and a great many of our most effective, experienced, and savvy officers simply up and left the service — some say as many as 25 percent. Show me a team that can continue to function at top efficiency when it loses one-fourth of its best veteran players. And you try to tell me after looking at this that the top does not have a direct effect on the troops on the ground. Kovar Towers; the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Saalam; the USS Cole; the failure to get Bin Laden when we had the chance; et al — none of those events surprised someone like me one damned bit. And show me a commander, who, when his own faithful troops are killed by a gunman at the very gates to their fortress, cannot be bothered to drive five miles to attend the mourning ceremony. He sends his wife instead. I assure you that that was not a morale-boosting day.

When Bush II took over in 2001, I suspect strongly that he did not start with a bunch of happy counterterrorist campers all armed to the teeth and engaged in battle on every front. Just about everything resulting from the policies of the Clinton years needed revamping and revising in order to regain the aggressiveness and effectiveness begun under the Reagan-Bush I era. This included recruiting and training a whole new generation of operatives, especially those with needed language skills. I was not privilege to what went on in the Oval office. I do not know how aggressively and persistently those who feared an attack pushed the subject at Bush. I do know that, because of the legal dustup over the Florida electoral votes, the Bush II administration got a later start than any administration in history in assembling its team. I also know that you had a guy trying to get a handle on probably the most complex nation on earth right in the midst of a cloud of accusations that he had stolen a presidential election. I also know that there were some major misfires at the operational level. How else to explain the difficulty of FBI field offices in getting FBI Hqs to react to reports of some mighty strange pilot training? Action right there might well have prevented 9/11. In the end , you can argue all you want about who should have done what from 20 January 2001 to 11 September 2001. That is not my point. My point is after 9/11.

Division III: I will posit that, if the Clinton era, in my opinion, had a negative effect coming down from the top, the Bush II era after 9/11 had the reverse. The troops in the field cannot change the rules of their own volition — at least in this day and age they would do so at their own personal peril. When the rules are changed significantly, those rule changes come from the top. When the funding is increased it comes from the top. When new and unusual tools are sought, that permission comes from the top. When moral support is needed, the greatest effect comes when it’s from the top. I will tell you that people have had to operate in this day and age with lawyers under foot to give them advice on what they can and cannot do. You just do not go off on your own without harming your career. And you know when the top is listening and paying attention when your chief has an open door to the Oval Office. Ever have a President ask you for talking points? I have. Ever had a President act like you didn’t exist? I have. Mighty big difference that “top” can make. I am far from an Obama fan. But I do see that he apparently intends to become and stay engaged. Good for him. That’s exactly what is needed: the guy at the top leading the charge.

I could go on and write a book about this but I might say something I shouldn’t. I will tell you this. You can argue all you want about 20 January-11 September 2001. I’m talking about Bush II’s strategy and tactics after 9/11. In my opinion, he did more than just shake the box and walk away. He stayed engaged. God knows, I have been a critic of Bush II on a whole raft of issues, not the least being that folly called the southern border. But consider as well that there is another army of pols up on the Hill who commit that same folly every day. And if the southern border does turn out to be our Achilles Heel, I will jump down the throats of every last one of them, including Bush and Obama. But, with regard to the revamping and revitalizing of the counterterrorist troops in the field over the past eight years, I will give Bush II credit where credit is deserved. I know what it’s like to be in the fight with and without the support from the top. I don’t like it when people are so taken up with their hatred that they cannot parse out something worthy from all the negatives. To me that doesn’t make you some sort of Bushbot. It shows that you can discern differences where appropriate.

Bob, you brought up some other points like Tora Bora, Bin Laden in hiding, and liquid explosives. It would take another book to cover all that. Let me say that I consider Tora Bora a military mistake, complicated by, among other things, the uneasy and unpredictable state of relations with Pakistan and Pakistan’s very loose control of its northwest border. I’m not going further than that at this point.

Bin Laden in hiding? I’ve fought terrorist groups which were tightly controlled within a particular area and those which were widely spread throughout the world with individual units under looser control. My own opinion at this point is that al Qaeda now falls into the latter category. It does not need a supreme field marshall pulling the operational strings at every step. Yes, it would be nice to catch him. But I guarantee that, if he falls, there will be somebody ready to take his place. Let him rot in his cave and send out a stupid recorded message once in awhile. We need to peel that al-Qaeda onion by stopping the individual , virtually independent commands wherever they are in the field, and eventually leave the old bugger just talking to himself. On the other hand, Obama’s planned surge in Afghanistan could perhaps result in a nice find of that nature. Good. Hang him high when you find him, even though I doubt it will stop al Qaeda in its tracks. It will probably give him even greater value as a martyr.

Explosive liquids? You could argue the point. Just remember that the people involved in this fight are human, not robocops. They make mistakes. Which of us on this blog doesn’t. I made a major one once and came very close to not being here to write this post. .60 calibre at my temple in the hands of a chap who was mightily enraged. And guess what, Karla H. The guy who saved my life happened to be the same color as that “Sambo” you so nastily referred to in your post. You just don’t “Sambo” anyone when you are personally around me. No, sirrreee. A lot of those guys have been my brothers-in-arms.