Bush admin fails by outing kahn

Of course the ghastly liberal media has jumped on this grave breach of trust for political reasons that has compromised the search for bin Laden just as hard as they jumped on Sandy Berger for taking photo copies of documents he helped to author. And they have done a balanced job of reporting every wild slander that the left might attribute to Bush's lapse, just as they did with Berger (he's covering up for Clinton! He's a mole for Kerry!).

Oh wait...

Don't worry.

The Bush administration will go after the outing party with the same vigour it promised and displayed in finding the White House source for the outing of CIA Agent Plame.

Oh wait...

Originally posted by SDW2001
Terror is flat, at worst.

If Terror is flat, that means Bush hasn't done enough to make things safe.

Originally posted by SDW2001
Terror is flat, at worst.

Deficits are up, and with some reason.

International anger is up because the US is...GASP..acting in its own interests.

Security is not down. Please explain that to me.

Personal rights are not down. Please illustrate one right that you personally have lost as a result of this administrations policies?

The economy is not down. It's growing quite steadily, thank you.

SDW: "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! There is no school tomorrow mommy. Look see, Fred told me there wasn't and he is my friend. NO NO NO NO NO!"

well one of the last two theories has to be correct:lol:

The White House tends to politicize everything.

I'm going to think it's general incompetence at this point, in both instances (the alert, and the release of this guy's name) were done prematurely. When in both cases a little patience would have done the administration well.

incompetence and over-eagerness, i say.

There is no winning when it comes to warning people about terrorist activity. You're either being too obtuse, vague and political or you're blowing further intelligence, inciting fear, and showing your cards to the terrorists. It's like eating porridge I guess. Will someone tell me when we get it just right? :D

Expect whoever is President in 2005 to suffer the same problem, and whoever is that president's successor. Everyone is of course welcome to criticize in this regard, and will probably argue both sides of it at some point, but don't think that Kerry will somehow avoid this situation if elected. I'm not voting for him with the expectation that that this will change, and if people are, they're in for a big disappointment. I do find it ironic that people effectively accuse Kerry of "waffling", and apparently the Bush admin is guilty of the same in this matter. I think both this argument like the "waffling" one are off base to a fair degree.

There's some indications that Pakistani officals actually outed the guy and the Bush admin compounded the issue by confirming as much. There's also some indications that this Kahn guy was suspected by others in Al Qaeda to be giving them up. Since more recent arrests have been based on his knowledge, he might have been the common denominator, and they might have been figuring that out.

The question is in the end, would you allow any plots to continue and maybe even succeed in order to catch the bigger fish down the line? During WWII, the British deliberately allowed some German planning to go through so that they wouldn't suspect they had cracked the German codes. That meant that some men died and ships sank in the short term but in the long term, they got the best of the Nazis. I would think this approach would serve us better down the line, but we are dealing with politicians, and no matter who we elect, that factor won't change.

It amazes me how so many of you have such a vile and bitter hatred for the President. You really fear him don't you?

Originally posted by BuonRotto
There is no winning when it comes to warning people about terrorist activity. You're either being too obtuse, vague and political or you're blowing further intelligence, inciting fear, and showing your cards to the terrorists. It's like eating porridge I guess. Will someone tell me when we get it just right?
This is not an accurate characterization. You can't the the rarest and most sensitive of possible circumstances and extrapolate that onto the handling of all intelligence. If anything, the situation with Iraq demonstrated conclusively the problems associated with that.

The fact of the the matter is that some 90% of our intelligence comes from open sources. Of the remainder, only ~2% or less comes from humint, and a smaller percentage of that from covert humint. On top of that, of that small percentage of covert humint information sources, only a very, very small number are actually valid sources, as demonstrated publicly with the INC.

It really should have been a no-brainer for this bush admin official to keep his or her mouth shut on this one. But that has absolutely nothing to do with overall secrecy at all. That's just a political argument disconnected from the reality of modern intelligence analysis, citizen awareness and government secrecy.
There's some indications that Pakistani officals actually outed the guy and the Bush admin compounded the issue by confirming as much.
No there isn't. Condi already stated that an administration official gave up the name on background.

Originally posted by giant
The information with khan was the old information.

Like with the INC. And Iraq overall. You know, where we actually got proof that the information was false.

Translation: nick's obsession with defending his political beliefs means he is willing to forgive gross misconduct that puts the safety of US citizens at risk, destroys ongoing operations and lets al-qaeda members evade capture.

Translation: giant always launches into a personal attack when he is shown to be wrong.

Nick

Originally posted by giant
about what?

Sadly you become so unable to defend yourself that you purposefully manipulate the quoting system to change people's words.

Nick

Originally posted by pfflam
And you always avoid the issue by taking a very very small slight, (and in this case it wasn;t even a slight, merely a 'heads-up' to what you tend to do) and concentrating on that while letting the ball drop . . . or really, dropping it because your position is untenable.
exactly.

Originally posted by trumptman

They can't decry the timing claiming politics, then have justification provided and decry the fact that it was actually provided. They ASKED for it and got it.

Nick

yes they can, because the administration has been guilty of both things!
they've trumped up intel to the point where no one trusts anything that comes from anyone in the administration, and they've politicized everything as well.

From my perspective, your position seems muddled and confused-- a problem compounded by the opinion that your writing fails to "quite clearly" explain much at all. No one "asked" for the outing of the Pakistani double agent, as you've repeatedly argued otherwise.

Originally posted by ShawnJ
From my perspective, your position seems muddled and confused-- a problem compounded by the opinion that your writing fails to "quite clearly" explain much at all. No one "asked" for the outing of the Pakistani double agent, as you've repeatedly argued otherwise.

This was definitely political and much will be made of it in the coming weeks.

Well, I can see there's no point in talking about it since everyone has made up their minds and have settled into attacking one another. Surprise! It's just the same old crowd who feel more free to beat up on each other like it's a little cock fighting ring in here. Too bad.

Originally posted by pfflam
It is clearly possible to not have cared a whiff about the supposed political-ness of the terror alert and its timing
BUT THEN
To care a very great deal about the idiotic outing of this agent as a desperate effort to cover their butts

and then the following possibilities then become tenable:
Its possible to not care about the timing issue but to still care about the outing-and-leaking administration

or, it is possible that someone who did not believe, or care too much, about the timing of terror alerts and their supposed political-ness, sees this desperate, hurried, hands-in-their-pants-zippers-down-porn-tapes-rolling kind of panic, and then begins to see politics where it might not have been seen . . .

. . that is my position: I didn't think too much about the 'political timing' until the administration, in a guilty panic, used one of its most despicable but effective weapons: leaks to the media . .

. .. but really they don't just 'use' this weapon, they 'misuse' it!!!

You make a good point pfflam. I'll also grant that in the other thread you did at times appear to withhold judgement on the "politicalness" of the terror alerts.

However it also doesn't appear that there were multiple updated sources that confirm the earlier information. As so far as we know, this is the person and latest information they were using to confirm the earlier information which was part of the rational for the terror alerts. It doesn't appear they have any other means of confirming the earlier information but to divulge this information.

My view is that they were painted into a corner, and simply had no other means of getting out without divulging the most up to date information to silence the partisan critics. I'll be happy to entertain other views though. If you can give me a plausible scenario that would have silenced those claiming the terror alerts were political but did not expose who gave us this latest information, I'll be happy to consider it.

Also please don't say that Bush could have just ignored the critics. When people begin not taking the alerts seriously or doubting their intent, it puts us in harms way. It creates the same sort of casual attitude that helped 9/11 to happen. (Box cutters, who cares about box cutters)

Nick

Originally posted by BuonRotto
Well, I can see there's no point in talking about it since everyone has made up their minds and have settled into attacking one another. Surprise! It's just the same old crowd who feel more free to beat up on each other like it's a little cock fighting ring in here. Too bad.

23 minutes later, responding to a legitimate complaint about the clarity of the point he's making:

Originally posted by trumptman
Well I'm sure that much in life is muddled and confused from your perspective. That's really not my problem.

Nick

:no: The outing of Khan was a mistake and desired by no one. You can't justify it by blaming the mistake on critics of the color-coded alert system.

Originally posted by groverat
You realize, of course, that engaging in ad-hominem makes your complaints against ad-hominem less compelling?

Perhaps in most cases, but anyone who hangs around here knows Shawn's pattern. He complains about a lack of clarity, tries to force you into minutia and then uses anything, even a typo or grammatical mistake to drag the thread into an attack on the messenger instead of the message.

I really don't care to go down that path with him any more. Especially, since when asked to do the reverse he refuses.

Nick

Originally posted by pfflam
:lol:
such equivocation
such self deception
. . . its a beautiful thing

And I think to myself... I took this person off ignore?!?

:lol:
Nick

Originally posted by trumptman
(edit)
My view is that they were painted into a corner, and simply had no other means of getting out without divulging the most up to date information to silence the partisan critics. I'll be happy to entertain other views though. If you can give me a plausible scenario that would have silenced those claiming the terror alerts were political but did not expose who gave us this latest information, I'll be happy to consider it.

Also please don't say that Bush could have just ignored the critics. When people begin not taking the alerts seriously or doubting their intent, it puts us in harms way. It creates the same sort of casual attitude that helped 9/11 to happen. (Box cutters, who cares about box cutters)

Nick

This is kinda a bizarre line of reasoning.

You're saying that the Bush admin, which heretofore has not given a rat's ass about its "partisan critics", was somehow was forced to give up a valuable asset in order to "silence" same.

And this is not playing politics with terror, because the fact that people have grown cynical about terror alerts obliges the white house to start providing proof of why the alerts are for real.

You sure you want this to be you argument?

Because the idea that those pesky lefties are forcing the presidents hand is silly. As if all the shouting and gnashing of teeth so far has had any effect whatsoever on policy. And if it were true, it would mean the white house is more interested in "silencing partisan critics" than preserving national security.

A problem you try to avoid by claiming that it has now become necessary to provide sourcing for terror alerts because the nation isn't taking them seriously any more.

Which confirms what many of us have been strenuously arguing, that the bush penchant for devaluing terror alerts by issuing them for what appears to be political expediency has a corrosive effect on our actual preparedness.
On the other hand, if true, it means that from here on out we can expect intel to be compromised for the sake of "coming off as not lying".

And yes, I can bloody well expect Bush to not abuse the so called WOT for political reasons at the same time I fault him for blowing the cover of a useful insider. Claiming that this is some kind of hypocritical "they're never satisfied" thing is disingenuous at best.

If Bush doesn't have the balls to stand up to the so called "liberal" media and keep his mouth shut about intelligence sources he sure as hell doesn't have the balls to stand up to the terrorists. Time for him to join daddy as a one-term wonder.

it was acknowledged by condi rice on sunday, it can be found here (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-08-10-pakistan-intel_x.htm) among other places.

excerpt:
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that Khan's name had been disclosed to reporters in Washington "on background," meaning that it could be published, but the information could not be attributed by name to the official who had revealed it.