Salon: "A Temporary Coup" (greatest foreign policy catastrophe…"

Author Thomas Powers says the White House's corruption of intelligence has caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history -- and sparked a civil war with the nation's intel agencies.

The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.

Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence. From failing to anticipate 9/11 to pressuring the CIA to produce bogus justifications for war, from abusing Iraqi prisoners to misrepresenting the nature of Iraqi insurgents, the Bush White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies they corrupted, coerced or ignored have made extraordinarily grave errors which could threaten our national security for years. By manipulating intelligence and punishing dissent while pursuing an extreme foreign-policy agenda, Bush leaders have set spy against U.S. spy and deeply damaged America's intelligence capabilities.

"It's a catastrophe beyond belief. Going into Afghanistan was inevitable, and in my opinion the right thing to do. But everything since then has been a horrible mistake," Powers says. "The CIA is politicized to an extreme. It's under the control of the White House. Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis -- what really amounts to a constitutional crisis."

(snip)

But what troubles Powers the most, he says, is that the Bush administration completely subverted American democracy, browbeating Congress and the national security agencies to launch a war. "They correctly read how the various institutions of our government could be used to stage a kind of temporary coup on a single issue: Whether or not to go to war with Iraq."

more…
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/14/coup/index.html

The mind SPINS by the revelations ...

We can only be thankful that SOMEONE can also see this ...

:kick:

One aspect left out in the article is that George Tenet can now be called to testify before a grand jury and Shrubby cannot claim executive privilege to prevent him from doing so. Also, there is a fourth war being waged and that is the one of the people against the administration. Right now that war is being fought using the pen with hopes of victory at the ballot box in November.

A bunch of smoke. Must have come from the agency. The agency is trying to distance itself and the administration from the very policies they promoted.

Every time they fuck up, we get told it's just a temporary
aberration. Reminds me of the Savings and Loan meltdown,
the Iran-Contra crisis, the Iranian Hostage crisis, VietNam,
The Bay of Pigs, the list just goes on and on. When do you
admit they are just a bunch of ignorant, arrogant fuckups and
get on with replacing them?