This Gary Berntsen thing might get interesting...

[Wetzelbill]

I'd like to see what happens when his book comes out. I wonder how hard they'll attack him? The WH doesn't have to worry about another election, but, midterms are important, of course, plus, scandal upon scandal piling up hurts anything they might want to ram through policy wise. The Pentagon, especially Rummy, has taken hit after hit. From the botched reconstruction and the flawed invasion plan in Iraq, to inadaquately supporting the troops and Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon might be the weakest link in a chain of weak links. Rummy has proven to be disastrous at everything, he's like a reverse Midas, he could touch gold and it would turn to shit. My god that man is inept. So now you find out from a CIA officer that the WH and Pentagon botched -flat-out choked - the capture of bin Laden at Tora Bora. Well, it's been known for a while, but this just makes it official. It'll be interesting to see how the WH reacts to this.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080705A.shtml

[wli]

1. well, bin Laden's on their payroll; they need an Emmanuel Goldstein

They're not going to "bring him to justice," ever.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Oh, I think the Pentagon and Rumsfeld are doing exactly what the

Bush Cartel wants them to do. They are quite competent at following Bush Cartel orders, and it is Midas-positive, turning everything they touch into pure gold and lots of it, for certain select parties.

Whether it's an Air Force stand-down on 9/11 (not even defending the Pentagon, for godssakes! --not even the Pentagon!), or the carnival of looting in Iraq when the U.S. hit town, or not finding the Bush Cartel-funded Osama bin Laden, or using U.S. troops as cannon fodder for grabbing Iraqi oil, or, lesser noticed things like purging Arabic speakers from the infrastructure teams sent into Iraq, because they might be too sympathetic with the local culture--what LOOKS LIKE incompetence really ISN'T.

The war profiteers are quite happy with it all--their pockets BULGING with money, billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars--all of it DESIGNED for "incompetence," for massive looting, and for the INSTIGATION of endless war, so they can rob us and others of many, many more billions, forevermore.

It's not that they are incompetent at doing the right thing, it's that they never had any intention of doing the right thing. But they are quite competent at doing the WRONG things--at filling their own pockets, at grabbing all power, and at baldfaced lying.

The world was just getting too peaceful for them. Non-proliferation was working. Investigation and prosecution of terrorists was WORKING. Limited UN peacekeeping efforts were WORKING to handle any big breaches of the peace. So they HAD to mess all that up and CREATE war, out of the nothing.

No surprise then, that they would out, disable and destroy a 20 year CIA project to monitor WMDs around the world that was aimed at preventing proliferation. Aside from any immediate cause for that treasonous act (and I have my thoughts about what that was), it was necessary to the long term goal of endless war, and endless, uncapped, unregulated, unaccountable billions pouring into the pockets of private military corporations, one of which STILL PAYS the Vice President of the U.S. a million dollar a year "retirement" stipend.

Can't have objective eyes and ears NOTICING illicit arms deals--when you're running illicit arms yourself, and when your bread and butter is U.S. taxpayers paying for endless armaments to (ahem) protect us all from all those ILLICIT armaments that the CIA is now blinded to.

Now THAT's competence. Competence at the wrong thing. But competence. What a racket!

Competence. Hm-m-m. I've often wondered about this, as to transparent, verifiable elections. It seems to me a simple matter of competence and common sense to have a transparent, verifiable vote. And if Bush's "pod people" in Congress had wanted a transparent election system, it would not have been so difficult to create one. Pretty simple actually. All the votes are visible, trackable and recountable. So, what are we to make the UNBELIEVABLE INCOMPETENCE that characterizes our current election system, wherein private Bushite electronic voting companies count all the votes using "trade secret," proprietary software, with not even a paper trail in one third of the country, and completely inadequate auditing in the rest, and two such companies (major Bush supporters) having control of 80% of the vote tabulation?

Is that incompetence? Or is that quite amazing skill and cunning at hoodwinking the American people?