Consider these events and decide for yourself:
- Plamegate. Did elements within the CIA who disagreed with the administration's Iraq policies deliberately select Joe Wilson, the husband of CIA officer Valerie Plame, in an effort to discredit the administration with his highly critical post-Niger "yellowcake" uranium report? Wilson was not required by the CIA to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to making the trip to Niger, nor was he required to even give a written report upon his return. Was that omission, usually a requirement under such circumstances, a deliberate effort to allow Wilson to write his infamous op-ed piece? By appearances, it looks like his trip was simply an effort by at a minimum a rogue CIA operation, and possibly something even larger. Too bad most of what Wilson had to say in his report turned out to be lies and untruths. In fact, there WAS over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium found in Iraq, and it's likely source was Niger.
- CIA. Plamegate was merely a battle in an on-going war between the CIA and the Whitehouse. Following the resignation of former director George Tenet, Porter Goss was named to head the agency, with clear marching orders to reform the organization post-9-11, and to attempt to purge the organization of politically partisan operatives who sought to undermine administration policy.
- The State Department. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, in a speech in 2003 as well as in subsequent articles has written of a systemic, institutionalized resistance by certain parts of the State Department, specifically career officers, to the authority of the president. He suggests that this has been going on for at least several decades now. Here is an excerpt from a recent Gingrich article in ForeignPolicy.com (reproduced with permission by American Diplomacy):
"Some critics, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, have taken me to task for my remarks at the American Enterprise Institute on April 22, 2003, where I argued that the State Department was engaging in a “deliberate and systematic effort” to undermine Bush’s foreign policy. Yet that charge has proved true historically, and additional examples have emerged even since the speech.None of the people involved in these activities or 'leakers' were elected to serve the people. All are either career officers, hired to execute certain tasks as directed by their superiors. Their surperiors were either hired (if career officers), or appointed by the President if a political appointee. All serve at the pleasure of the President. The President is the chief executive of the United States. His job is to execute the laws enacted by Congress. The various departments under his command are there to serve him and his policies. Whether those working in these departments agree with the policies of the President is irrelavent. If their personal views interfere with their duties as agents of the United States, and their abilities to carry out the policies as directed by the President, then they should at a minimum be fired, and possibly charged with treason.
Only six days following my remarks, Bush made the following statement to a group of Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan: “I have confidence in the future of a free Iraq. The Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.” He also told them that “You are living proof the Iraqi people love freedom and living proof the Iraqi people can flourish in democracy. People who live in Iraq deserve the same freedom that you and I enjoy here in America.”
Contrast that vision with a recent classified report by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research titled “Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes,” which was leaked in March 2003 to the Los Angeles Times. As reported by that newspaper, the document stated that “liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve [in Iraq] . . . Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements.” And according to an anonymous intelligence source interviewed by the newspaper, the thrust of the report argued that “this idea that you’re going to transform the Middle East and fundamentally alter its trajectory is not credible.”
The Los Angeles Times has also reported that U.S. diplomats (insisting upon anonymity) “said they are profoundly worried about what they describe as the [Bush] administration’s arrogance or indifference to world public opinion, which they fear has wiped out, in less than two years, decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States.” Meanwhile, as reported recently by National Review Online contributor Joel Mowbray, a Bush administration official believes the outgoing director of policy planning at the State Department, Richard Haass, has “made it his mission to loosen sanctions on Iran,” despite Bush’s designation of Iran as part of the “axis of evil.”
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