The Question of the Intelligence Community

there must be a better way

Just last week Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife were indicted for bribery in connection with “their ties with a bank in Mexico and an oil and gas company controlled by Azerbaijan.” Some people say that there was an intelligence community connection with the indictment.

Then there is the intelligence community connection with the Trump classified documents case that now seems to be in abeyance because shenanigans wrt Jack Smith.

Then there is the intelligence community association with the Get Trump movement, going back to 2016. Remember the 51 intelligence community professionals all saying that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation back in 2020?

Then there is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his remark:

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

Hey, Chuck! How about you and Our Nance and Uncle Tom Cobbley get together to create six ways from Sunday for getting back at the IC?

Then we have NPR CEO (and former Wikimedia CEO) Katherine Maher who seems to have been involved in the “color revolutions” of the early 2000s. Just between you and me, I don’t detect an original thought in that young lady. And why is a woman associated with the intelligence community heading up a gubmint-adjacent media institution?

Then there is the question of Richard Nixon and Watergate and the curious case of Bob Woodward, WaPo reporter and former naval intelligence officer. WaPo was his first job in journalist-ology.

Then there is the question of the assassination of President Kennedy and the curious case of the firing of CIA boss Allen Dulles in 1961.

Look, I don’t care if the intelligence community is involved six ways from Sunday in national politics. What I care about is does the intelligence community know what it is doing? Or is it a bunch of Keystone Kops that literally does not know what it is doing and is Making Things Worse?

Here is what I would like to know.

What exactly was the problem with Richard Nixon that he had to be got rid of? Apart from the insult of his election in 1968 and his re-election in 1972. If you remember, the net result of Nixon’s removal was six years of “stagflation” before the “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan came along and got things “sorted.” Was that part of the plan?

Whose brilliant idea was the “color revolutions” in the Middle East? As in, did anyone get a word in edgewise to ask whether the downside risk was greater than the glorious possibility of genuine democratic regimes? My superficial judgement of the whole Ukraine affair is that it has turned out to be a complete cluster you-know-what. And how come Joe Biden hasn’t been indicted for foreign bribery like Rep. Henry Cuellar?

Then there is 2016, with Trump and Brexit, and, according to Mike Benz, the re-direction of the intelligence community from outward-facing revolution to inward-facing political action.

And don’t get me started on 2020.

See, I have questions.

Shouldn’t US foreign policy center on dividing Russia and China, as in the good old days of Nixon and Kissinger?

Shouldn’t the US be causing trouble in Iran by finding six ways from Sunday to back the vast majority that is sick to death of the current regime?

Shouldn’t the US be backing away from an anti-Russia stance and telling the Europeans, from the Poles to the Portuguese, that Russia policy is your problem?

How is the US going to redirect domestic policy from a neverending expansion of the state — in entitlements, in regulation, in lawfaring, in climate-changing? Does anyone in the regime realize what a complete mess they have got into? And that while life is great for the educated elite, it kinda sucks for everyone else, from twenty-somethings wanting to start a family and the lower class needing to get out of the neo-serfdom of welfare and handouts?

When are we going to have a full-dress Congressional investigation of the late COVID unpleasantness to establish that such a cluster you-know-what never happens again, from lockdowns to mega-money printing to questionable and untried vaxx technology?

And when are we going to cut the intelligence community down to size? How about an arbitrary 67.4 % cut in its budget? And then instrument the IC in a comprehensive social-science experiment to see what happens, and whether a major cut in a government department improves its operation or not.

OK. That’s all folks. For today.