Day: January 7, 2010

Honesty Is The Best Policy

I have been a staunch critic of the head of the RNC, Michael Steele, ever since his election to the post…..I have not thought the man had his stuff together enough to lead the GOP….but then he said this:  From the article in the NY Times:

Chairman Michael Steele thinks Republicans have ”screwed up” for the most part in the years since Ronald Reagan was president. And, he adds in an interview on the heels of his new book’s release, Republicans won’t win back the House in fall elections and might not be ready to lead even if they do.

Asked Monday by talk-show host Sean Hannity if Republicans can regain the House in November, Steele said, ”Not this year.” He added: ”I don’t know yet, because I don’t know all the candidates yet. We still have some vacancies that need to get filled, but then the question we need to ask ourselves is, if we do that, are we ready?”

In answer to his own question, Steele said: ”I don’t know. And that’s what I’m assessing and evaluating right now. Those candidates who are looking to run have to be anchored in these principles … because if they don’t, then they’ll get to Washington, and they’ll start drinking that Potomac River water, and they’ll get drunk with power and throw the steps out the window.”

Steele also has done some criticism of the GOP and its candidates:

–President George H.W. Bush for raising taxes two years after President Ronald Reagan left office, though Steele ignores the fact that Reagan raised taxes too.

–President George W. Bush for not vetoing spending bills during his first five years in office. He calls Bush and other Republicans ”enablers for big government” and derides the Bush administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program as ”a massive government slush fund.”

–Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, for backing censorship of political speech through the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Steele says the GOP erred in allowing itself to be associated with ”a national political speech code.”

–Republican lawmakers in general, who allowed spending to rise from 2001 to 2004, went along with TARP and McCain-Feingold, and supported the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit.

I may still criticize Steele in the future, but for now I applaud his honesty and his candor……he may just not be as ignorant as I first thought…..time will tell if this was just an isolated incident or that he may well have some good ideas to resurrect the GOP….

Addendum:  and then he makes a racist remark, like “honest Injun”……he could not let me praise him for awhile before reverting back to the BS……oh well I tried…..

The Spy Game

Recently the CIA had a brain fart and let 7 of their best people in Afghanistan get popped…..this in my opinion was a STUPID mistake…I mean last year one of the many princes of Saudi Arabia was almost killed by a “butt bomb”….a bomb canceled in the rectum of a suicide bomber…..these people are ingenious and yet they let a double agent waltz into a meeting with the top Afghan analysts and blow his ass up taking the CIA operatives with him……

Let’s ask…..other than that professor how is the CIA doing in Afghanistan?

CNN reported on the testimony of CIA:

U.S. spies “can do little but shrug” when commanders ask for the information they need to fight the Taliban insurgency, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Afghanistan said in a blistering report.U.S. military intelligence officers in Afghanistan spend too much time focusing on enemy groups and tactics and not enough on trying to understand Afghanistan’s culture, people and networks, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn wrote in a report published Monday.

American military intelligence gathering is “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers,”

The report said some good work is being done on the ground, and that local intelligence officers “know a great deal about their local Afghan districts.” But, the report said, they “are generally too understaffed to gather, store, disseminate and digest” information.

And, critically, they do not have the resources to gather information which could give Americans a better understanding of Afghanistan, such as census data, patrol debriefs, minutes from councils with local farmers and tribal leaders, polling data, translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers and the like.

I would say that it is a bit of a critical report on the CIA operations in Afghanistan…….the people on the ground SUCK and then the only ones that have experience they allow to be killed…..sounds like an agency that has its head up some bureaucrats ass…..and does not sound like a way to win the war for minds and hearts…..if they cannot deal with trivial info, how can they handle important stuff?