That link to the New Yorker was excellent. Did you read it?
newyorker.com
<<The leaders of the State Department, who are more restrained in their planning, accuse the Pentagon civilians of confusing dissent with disloyalty; Pentagon officials, in turn, accuse Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, of a loss of nerve. "It's the return of the right-wing crazies, crawling their way back," one of Armitage's associates said, referring to Wolfowitz's team. "The knives are out." One senior State Department official angrily told me that he would "meet them"—his "pissant" detractors in the Pentagon—"anytime, anywhere." In return, one of those detractors depicted the State Department's behavior as "unbelievably personal and vitriolic. Their attitude is that we're yahoos—especially those of us who come from the far right. The American Enterprise Institute"—a conservative think tank in Washington—"is like Darth Vader's mother ship for them."
>>
and
<<In previous Administrations, such interagency fights were often resolved by the national-security adviser, now Condoleezza Rice. But the National Security Council has been weakened recently by a series of resignations and reassignments, some of them said to be the result of internal bickering. The N.S.C. currently has no senior Iraq expert on its staff. Bruce Riedel, the longtime ranking expert on the Middle East, moved overseas recently on a sabbatical, and the person who recently filled in as the N.S.C.'s Iraq expert, an intelligence officer on loan from the C.I.A., went back to the agency after only a few months at the White House. A third regional expert left the N.S.C. this winter after a series of policy disputes with civilian officials in the Pentagon. With no replacement in sight, a former official told me, the N.S.C. has been forced to "farm out" papers on important issues to the C.I.A. and the State Department.>>
That's as far as I've gotten. |
