It's not the number, it's defining clear and non-competitive missions for those that we have. Competing missions within an agency will define failure.
First define the missions that Americans feel are important. Then divide those into noncompeting tasks. Now count the number of agencies needed. The answer might be more or less than we have today, but probably the result will be a different lineup of tasks for the agencies.
If there's any good that can come out of the 9/11 hearings, which have turned too partisan to be of much use, it's that the wall between domestic law enforcement and intelligence erected after the "Intelligence Inquisition" conducted by Senator Frank Church is now ill-advised and anachronistic, if it ever was appropriate in the first place.
Creating new bureaucracies (which I oppose reflexively as a Conservative) is likely not the answer; using and/or reforming the instrumentality already in place probably is.
Not.
After all, given the far Left genesis of your comment, it's quite apparent that you gave the Clinton Administration a pass for lies and incompetence.
Personally, I can cite several of my own. Including my Wal-Mart comments, and my comment about Condoleeza NOT perjuring herself. But you are totally over the deep end. You scoffed when I said I supported Conservatives like McCain and Lugar and Hegel, and Dole, that they were not Conservatives. I suggest that you look the word up in the dictionary. It's George W. Bush that is NOT a Conservative. Socially, he's an Evangelical reactionary, and economically, he's the most Liberal President in U.S. History. Ronald Reagan was a Conservative. Bush is someone completely without ideology other than that of an Evangelical Christian.
What you cite are myths that you are attempting to pass off as lies, rendering the liar ... someone other than GWB. And I scoffed at the notion that the Johns -- McCain and Warner --- are Conservatives, not Hegel and Dole, though Newt Gingrich (he who led the House GOP out of forty years in the wilderness) correctly identified the latter as "the tax collecter for the welfare state."
I'm perfectly willing to concede that there is much about GWB which is not Conservative. Like further socializing American health care with a $400 billion or more prescription drug benefit for old farts. Or by further intruding on education with No Child Left Behind. But lowering taxes is certainly Conservative.
And I always bristle when Libs try to tell us Conservatives how to be Conservative.
With a straight face? Let's make this a little excercise in intellectual honesty. I freely admit that Clinton lied about Monica. I thought his mistake was in answering the questions in the first place - his response should have been 'that's none of your business' and let it go at that.
Come on. Tell us that GWB is entirely truthful. I want to hear that.
I said nothing about Clinton - if you want to discuss him, start a thread.
Next time you get pulled over for speeding, be sure to point out all the other cars that are speeding - I'm sure the cop will let you go and apologize for bothering you.
Try something new - discuss a point without bringing up Clinton. No, wait - you'd have to HAVE a point to do that.
Clinton got a blow job and lied about it - Bush invades a Sovereign fucking country and lies about it - but you will still run your mouth about Clinton.
Actually - you may be right. Clinton briefed Bush about Osama, and Convoluted Rice was briefed about Osama - and since it was those awful people who get blow jobs telling them they quite naturally ignored it.
Idiots.
That "speeding ticket" line isn't even original. And as I responded to it the first time it was thrown out, when the speeding ticket is issued by a speeder or someone who advocates speeding for others, then I'll sure as hell point out the hypocrisy of he who accuses.
What I'm pointing out --- and concededly presuming --- is that you were and/or are a Clinton supporter, and that you likely overlooked his lies and incompetence. It's neither inappropriate nor improper to raise that point. Just embarrassing. For you.
And I've pointed out Clinton's lies and crimes elsewhere. They weren't just about a blow job. And it's really too bad that you view perjury to conceal relevant facts in a sexual harassment suit to be so minor. So long as it's target is a Liberal you want to protect.
The fact that Clinton lied about a blow job, just like he lied about a middle class tax cut, concealed his medical records, slandered the Travel Office people, and a host of other misdeeds, is why doubting his veracity with regard to warning GWB about Osama bin Laden is the only smart course.
Finally, you continue to perpetrate the far Left lie that "Bush invade[d] a Sovereign fucking country and lie[d] about it." No, what he did was execute a policy of regime change passed by Congress and signed by -- you guessed it! -- Slick Willie himself. You can't even give GWB credit when he does something with which your hero agrees.
'Course, you probably reveal your own belief in his dishonesty, because you probably conclude that, like everything else, Slick Willie lied about that, too.
Because anyone who thinks it's offensive to lie about getting a blowjob, but NOT offensive to lie about the reasons for entering a war and getting people killed is surely a hypocrite of the worst order.
What we are talking about is the claim, in the State of the Union Message, in January 2003, that Saddam was buying NUCLEAR material. This was a lie. George Tenant and Joseph Wilson had already TOLD Bush that there was no evidence of this. When Bush then used it in the State of the Union message, it was explicitly a lie, not an error of intelligence.
Once again, you're asserting that GWB "lie[d] about the reasons for entering a war and getting people killed." You proceed from a false premise, which is not made true by simply repeating the lie over and over again (except in Nazi Germany; Herr Goebbels (another Socialist) was a proponent of the "big lie" theory).
What Bush said is that we had an intelligence report from the British that Saddam was attempting to purchase nuclear material. It's not like it was unusual for him; you've never addressed the fact that Saddam possessed a nuclear reactor, built by the French, which was bombed by the Israelis in 1981. The report turned out to be erroneous. So blame the Brits, and Bush for believing a usually reliable ally.
A statement miscast is not a lie. Tenent never said any such thing to Bush, though there were apparently questions being raised about it by lower-level CIA types to lower-level White House types. Wilson wasn't even in the picture at the time.
Moreover, this wasn't the only reason for going after Saddam. That was American national policy since 1998.
But you lefty BushHaters simply can't consider all the facts.
"the wall between domestic law enforcement and intelligence .. is now ill-advised and anachronistic"
If you wish to eliminate this wall, then you have to make a hard choice:
1) Shall we repeal the 4th amendment and allow in criminal investigations, evidence that was collected without due process?
2) Shall we cripple intelligence gathering, by limiting it to only acquiring information through due process?
Either way, we're screwed. Just in different ways. I wouldn't be so hasty to throw away the "anachronistic" wall. I happen to like civil liberties AND less restrained spies.
They can't understand WHY we separate espionage for defense, and law enforcement back home. They don't believe in civil liberties. The fact is, the way of life in the U.S. that they would end up protecting is not a way of life worth defending.
Lots of people died for our freedoms. I would prefer to incur a bit more risk in my daily existence in order to retain these freedoms.
Actually, you propose a false dichotomy. It does not necessarily follow that destroying that wall requires repeal of the Fourth Amendment or allowing evidence collected without due process. Besides, the Fourth Amendment only prohibits use of illegally-seized evidence in criminal prosecutions, not as a basis for military action.
I would agree with your conclusion. I like civil liberties, too, and less-restrained spies. But the artificial wall created by the far Left --- mostly to protect their friends on the fringe Left, to which they seem to be moving ever closer --- has crippled our ability to protect ourselves against those who would destroy us.
What is perhaps most offensive is the fact that the BushHaters are now blaming Bush for the difficulties wrought by a device that they (or their ideological soulmates) created and defended. They can't have it both ways, since what they are actually criticizing Bush for is failing to ignore the limitations that they created and which, in the absence of a threat like al Qaeda, may even be a generally good idea.
would destroy us". Americans are more courageous than you seem to think. There are many, many of us who would rather see our lives and yes, the lives of our children, put at more risk than give up the civil liberties that those whe came before us fought and died for.
Bush is speaking the language of fear. This is not what a good leader does.
It's revealing that the far Left denies that there are those in the world who seek to destroy this nation even after a specific attack. I'm not sure whether to laugh at or cry over such ignorance, but it's sure not panic.
Bush is hardly speaking the language of fear. He's speaking the language of realism in a world which is too often hostile to freedom and America's vital national interests. And, much to the chagrin of the far Left that really hates America, he's acting to protect this nation.
It is fear that is causing the decline in our civil liberies - specifically, the fear of dying in a terrorist attack.
It really comes down to how much someone values freedom - are they willing to have an increased chance of dying, rather than live in a society that is less free?
-- Modified on 4/22/2004 7:06:03 AM
There is a position in the Government that holds responsibility for bridging these disparate sources of information. It's called the National Security Advisor. Convoluted Rice was the person who was supposeed to gather information from all available sources and bring intelligence to Bush. She has access to the FBI, the CIA etc down to local law enforcement. Either she was unable to put together the mountain of indicators that are daily being revealed or Bush was too stupid, arrogant and myopic to take it seriously.
The problem with any police force you set up is that they can always turn on you. It's an intrinsic problem, shown from the fact that even body's police force, the immune system, could always turn on you with an auto-immune disease.
I don't care too much about just any "new" agency to spend our borrowed money on. It's not our tax money anyway at this point. As long as the People's Republic of China approves of it. They are, after all, underwriting our government's debt now. If a secret police will keep them from cashing in... maybe we'll get secret police, now, whether we need them or not. 
The Bush administration again considers the wrong policy. I don't think the main problem is our policing. I think our main problem is that you can count on both hands (if that) the number of people in government that are fluent in Arabic or Farsi. In getting intelligence on Islamic terrorists, how is law enforcement going to recognize a threat, much less infiltrate groups, when nobody knows the languages they speak? Training current law enforcement in this is very important. You need a program to solve this problem. Nothing is being done.
/Zin