Driving Hard Right - and off the road

According to a recent report from the non-partisan Center For American Progress, newly installed CIA Director Porter Goss in a move the puts the lie to his claims that he would put his partisan past behind him, has begun an ideological political purge to remove those who have been "disloyal" to the Administration. (Story quoted below)

From what I recall these "disloyal" members of the CIA would be those who produced the original reports on Saddam Hussein's WMD's. According to Pentagon insiders such as Lt. Col Karen Kwiatkowski who has stated that it was well known that the intelligence information on Iraq was always inconclusive concerning WMD's and terrorism.

The certainty that we saw during the lead up to the Iraq War was a fabrication of the Bush Administration, who cherry picked the information and then fed redacted reports to the Congress and UN in order to support their plan.

The Iraq War was not the CIA's fault.

But this just might be what Bush and his lackey Goss would consider "disloyal".

The more recent CIA ISG Report on Iraq which further states this might also be "disloyal" since it clearly deviates from the Bush Admin.

Not long ago the CIA reported that the best case scenario in Iraq would be continued security problems and instability and the worst-case would be a Civil War.

George W. Bush said "they were just guessing"?

Really?

Aren't they paid to make informed and educated guesses which are supposed to give the President the tools to make effective foreign policy and military decisions? Isn't that their job?

Apparently not according this President.

Vyan

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Porter's Political Purge

At a time when the threat of terrorism has placed a premium on accurate intelligence, the White House is creating chaos at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The White House has ordered Bush's new CIA director, Porter Goss, "to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush." According to a senior CIA official, the agency is planning to get rid of "liberals" and others who are perceived as "obstructing the president's agenda." Among career CIA officials, Goss's partisan agenda has created "an atmosphere of ill will and apprehension [that] could distract the agency from its work in the fight against terrorism."

GOSS INSTALLS POLITICAL CRONIES IN TOP CIA POSITIONS: Goss has installed inexperienced political operatives from Capitol Hill in powerful positions and "given [them] wide latitude in running the agency." A staffer from the House Intelligence Committee, Patrick Murray, is Goss's chief of staff, and two other House Republican aides have been installed "as senior advisors with broad but unspecified authority." Rep. Jane Harman attributed low morale at the CIA to the "inexperienced" House Intelligence Committee staff members Goss has placed in top positions. Harmon described the group as "highly partisan," saying, "many of us worked with that staff in the House...on both sides of the aisle in committee, we were happy to see them go." Goss initially named another aide, Michael J. Kostiw, as the CIA's No. 3 official. But Kostiw "quickly withdrew from considerations after former intelligence officials mentioned that he had resigned from the C.I.A. in the early 1980's after an administrative leave in connection with a shoplifting case."