Neocon:
I want to review the New York Times story before making a stronger statement, but our sense of plausibility is simply different. The more there is to know, the more one relies on specialists and summary representations. It makes perfectly good sense to me that Rice would not be conversant with every technical dispute over intelligence
Respectfully, your position is just plain silly. Admittedly, the following analogy is not entirely apropos, but you position is a variant of “…the dog ate my homework…” excuse.
Father: “Son how could you fail your fail your math test. Didn’t you study?”
Son: “Well, Dad, the teacher reviewed it for us in class today. And I had these other things to do: I had to go to soccer practice, watch the latest episode of Survivor, practice my trombone, and don’t forget I had to eat dinner, too…”
Regarding the Aluminum tubes, as we now know, the internal disagreement amongst the intelligence agencies was WELL KNOWN at the time. And the issue is not technically obtuse; heck the people on this forum can understand it so why should we presume that the President or the National Security Advisor – who have on call the foremost experts on the planet - are so technically illiterate that they couldn’t (putting aside the issue that in the case of the Natl Sec Adv it was her job to understand). Finally, you cannot excuse the National Security Advisor or the President on the grounds that they cannot spend their time on the minutiae of problems. You certainly can make that argument in regards to whether or not the President should spend hours studying the pros or cons of “National Apple Pie Day”, but NOT regarding issues of peace or war.
The sign of competent executives (and this goes for all the senior Administration officials) is that one knows how to judge what is important versus what is not and spend their time accordingly. Hence, practically everything should have been back-burnered by these men and women until they had a complete grasp of the situation and the ambiguity or lack thereof of the data they were using to make a decision.
Saying “I trusted my advisors” is – at best - a complete and utter abdication of responsibility for which any Executive for this critical of a decision would be fired. (That’s why they get the big bucks.)
In Washington speak, to say “I trusted my advisors “ is codeword for “plausible deniability.” Again, that may work for tax policy or WTO negotiations, but not peace and war.
The bottom line is that your excuse for them is synonymous with a failure to take most seriously their responsibilities, to completely understand the data available – all the data – and was “best case” either incompetent or negligent. Worst case they are lying and that would make it criminal.
IMO, there is no excuse.
ww |
