• Tom DeLay : U.S. intelligence work Tom DeLay : U.S. intelligence work The Sun, Baltimore April 10, 2005 Don’t think House Majority Leader Tom DeLay isn’t sensitive to criticism. Just a couple of years ago, he abandoned his trademark
• Tom DeLay : U.S. intelligence work
Tom DeLay : U.S. intelligence work
The Sun, Baltimore April 10, 2005
Don’t think House Majority Leader Tom DeLay isn’t sensitive to criticism. Just a couple of years ago, he abandoned his trademark plastered-down hairstyle for a trendier blow-dried look because, he said, “I got tired of being called a helmet head.”
He just can’t seem to figure out, though, how to put to rest the flurry of ethics allegations now being hurled at him on almost a daily basis. He tried dismantling the House Ethics Committee, changing the subject to Terri Schiavo and launching an offensive against the federal judiciary. Yet the attacks against him have only intensified. He’s fallen back on the familiar tactic of blaming the Democrats and liberal media, but that won’t make the spotlight on him go away. …
DeLay’s Republican colleagues are reluctant to criticize him; most are deeply in his debt. He helped get many of them elected, and for years as House Whip tended to many of their personal needs in such housekeeping matters as office space and scheduling. Yet he has developed the same arrogant, out-of-touch attitude that helped cost the Democrats control of Congress in 1994. If DeLay doesn’t recognize what a liability he’s become and step aside before he critically wounds his party, his Republican colleagues should give him a shove.
Journal Star, Peoria, Ill., on U.S. intelligence work April 7, 2005
In words that are blunt and precise, the latest commission to assess U.S. intelligence work says the spy agencies weren’t just wrong about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, they were “dead wrong.” …
If our best intelligence is “dead wrong,” then how can we attack anyone to keep him from attacking us? But if we see threats where there are none, then might we also not see threats where they really do exist and fail to respond?
On that last point, the report was not encouraging. The errors made with regard to Iraq “are still all too common,” the panel said. …
The commission said more spies on the ground are needed as well as more cutting-edge technology. While it didn’t attempt to analyze how the nation’s leaders judged the data, it did urge that the president be given contrary information routinely, going so far as to recommend a department of contrariness. That it felt necessary to make such a recommendation is instructive.
As bedtime reading, this study is sure to induce night-mares. Or in the case of the White House, some sleepless nights to ponder what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again.
