The New Yorker
"The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.”

i don't know that there has been one. i do believe that gw will go down as the worst of all the presidents. though saying that assumes more knowledge of history than i possess in honesty. so, okay, the worst in all my life, and i've lived through some doozies. nixon. reagan.

but this guy...what i start to fear is that he'll end up not only the worst, but the last. because he's been shitcanning democracy ever since he strong armed his way into the office, and he has a bunch of powerful greedy conscienceless hangers-on who really have no "need" of democracy, being rich white men and all, and...and. i'm sputtering. and i'm pissed.

but what has really got me kinda scared is i don't think this worst case is as farfetched as it ought to be. thanks to Lying Media Bastards for pointing me to this article...it is another one that i would urge every single person to read. it's long and it's disheartening but we need to know this.

peace colors
- posted by barbara @ 10/24/2003 07:40:00 PM