It is one thing to just make bad decisions based on your flawed ideology. There are many presidents in our past who have fucked up continually. Herbert Hoover's poor decision making led to the worst economic period in our history. Warren Harding was famously corrupt and Richard Nixon was forced to resign for his shenanigans. But Bush and his cronies have done something puts them to shame. For political purposes they continue to harm the security of our nation. Its about scoring points for them, nothing else.

First came the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plames name to the press. Why? To get back at her husband, who had foolishly told the truth to the press about Iraqs total non-involvement of securing Uranium for Niger. Plame just happened to be part of a clandestine operation monitoring Irans nuclear weapons pursuits.

Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to "ten years" in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson's identity.

Now we find out the Bush administration leaked national security information to Fox News and destroyed a private intelligence companys surveillance of al Qaeda. On September 7th, the SITE Intelligence Group informed the Bush administration they had obtained an Osama bin Laden video. Two senior administration officials were given access, with one condition: DO NOT reveal the existence of the tape until al-Qaeda releases it. Any revelation would reveal sensitive details about the company's methods in acquiring the video.

So, what did the Bush administration do? They leaked the tape to the media. Twenty minutes after the White House was alerted to the existence of the tape, Intelligence agencies began downloading the video from the SITE website.

By mid-afternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

Nice work, boys. Thanks for your continued incompetence for political reasons. Why am I so certain it was released for political reasons? Because of the timing. As I noted in an article from September, the timing of the Osama tape release was extremely suspicious, arriving just two days before General Petreaus spoke to Congress. The General and Bush have been making a hard media push to convince America that al-Qaeda is the big bad in Iraq. And it never hurts to have an Osama tape pop up when you want to justify your bullshit wars. Who cares if it undermines a great terrorist intelligence source?

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

Yeah, but the White House needed to show that the threat was out there. Although, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino today said the administration is concerned about the leak.

"To the extent that we have Americans coming forward to provide us information, whether it be a private citizen or a private corporation or anybody in America who can provide the government information, we take it very seriously that they should: one, feel comfortable in providing that information that their sources will be protected and that we will act on it if necessary," Perino said. "We appreciate what they did. This was a cause of concern that the information was leaked."

Riiiight. Im sure whoever had a hand in it will be fired, also.

FearTheReaper thinks anyone who doesn't believe the White House leaked Valerie Plame's name is a fucking moron.

zarth

Seattle, WA

December 2004

OCT 10, 2007 09:05 AM

And yet, it's still a violation of state secrets to discuss well-documented instances of government incompetence, corruption, and abuses.

68stretch

Portland, OR

March 2003

OCT 10, 2007 09:11 AM

I smell a couple new medals of freedom.

mydogfarted

Oakland, NJ

June 2003

OCT 10, 2007 09:17 AM

Jesus... I'm moving to Canada. At least then I can smoke up legally and not care.

meggle

Berkeley, CA

November 2002

OCT 10, 2007 09:28 AM

...and how about those early bin fatty tapes from 2001...when it wasn't even him? that was classic. thereafter, repugs have trotted him out like a tired circus clown when they need to scare up some fear in the polls...talk about a worn out pattern. but remember bush said he didn't even care where bin laden was? first dead or alive, then let him go at tora bora, then not a care and a disbanded cia unit that was trying to find him while the fbi takes him off the list for 9/11 due to lack of evidence. then more videos and election time. then bin who? now, general betray us spins out, quick call bin laden! get some feed! we need to ramp up the boogeyman knob to 11! what a tool. bush and the lot of us for too often buying it (like the 40% of americans that still think iraq was behind 9/11 and the 31% of people that still think w is a great leader- who are these people?). sad truth is, they'll keep this ruse going for the rest of our lives, or theirs. uncle rummy even promised. it's their ticket. and that says nothing of convenient and constant leaks...it's the white house m.o. this latest example takes the yellow cake.

zarth

Seattle, WA

December 2004

OCT 10, 2007 09:31 AM

mydogfarted said:
Jesus... I'm moving to Canada. At least then I can smoke up legally and not care.

And in Soviet Canuckistan, girlfriend has you!

Wait, what?

Shell_Shock

Rockmart, GA

May 2007

OCT 10, 2007 09:41 AM

Per FearTheReaper:
"Herbert Hoover's poor decision making led to the worst economic period in our history."

Blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression is like blaming Gerald Ford for Vietnam. Most of the credit for the depression could arguably be given to his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge ran the country pretty much the way Barry Switzer ran the Dallas Cowboys.