Not exactly on subject, but A Huffington has an interesting article on her late night dinner with Chalabi http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/chillin-with-chalabi-my_b_10651.html

Would Steve have gone to dinner with a criminal?

The way of reforming the system has already been
studied and implemented. This law was signed by Bill Clinton on October 10th 2000.
It is called the National Economic Security and Reformation ACT - NESARA

http://thegalacticpost.blogspot.com/

I put a lot of skill and effort into bitching and complaining, so I don't appreciate having this public service denigrated.

Sorry, I missed the Wilkerson interview. I was watching the Ahmed Chalabi interview on the “NewsHour.” The man is having a great time in Washington! Sen. Warner defended Chalabi’s meetings with Cheney, Rice and others and announced that he (Warner) himself was going to meet with him tomorrow. Anyway, I hope to find out what Col. Wilkerson said about decision making. I wonder, though, if you can really accomplish a great deal by changing some rules in the White House when (a) voters elect and re-elect Ws for your president, (b) media and Congress become cheerleaders to warmongers until things start going wrong in the battlefield, and then they get busy rewriting their scripts and (c) commitment to a colossal war machine remains a supreme and universal political virtue. On this last point, can you imagine the neocons plunging America into the Iraq catastrophe in defiance of the world and common sense if the United States didn’t have a bloated military power? During the past half-century large segments of our democratic process – including the electoral process – have been corrupted and hijacked by special interests. Promoting transparency and honesty in the way the White House conducts itself would of course be useful. But I am waiting for some of our reformers and leaders (like Steve) to initiate a broad national debate on reforming our democratic process itself, especially the electoral process.

Mustafa

Steve,

This is a bit off-topic, I know, but I thought as an Asia expert, you might find it of interest -- Bush apparently is going to give a rather provocative speech tomorrow on the subject of democracy in China.

Somehow, I don't think holding Taiwan up as a shining model for China is going to resonate the way he thinks it will.

Anyway, it's mainly of interest because it shows how much sway the neoconservatives still have in the second Bush administration...

In seeking to salvage a presidency now in its "last throes", President Bush answered charges of past deception with a new crop of lies.

For the full story, see:

"Bush Rewrites History."

The more I think about it, the more I like Cheney for 2008!

Bush is promoting democracy in China! I’m sure most Chinese would like to see their system liberalized -- and I believe it will be, as their middle class grows vertically and horizontally -- but I’m also sure most Chinese will say they can’t afford the kind of democracy that produces government leaders of Bush’s intellectual prowess and Cheney’s moral fiber. While we in America value the process regardless of its outcome (the same way Muslim clerics are concerned about Islamic prayer rituals rather than the conduct of the believers), many other societies hold “social justice issues” very important. An example is the use of chemical weapons by the American military in Falluja. The other day the British Parliament had a vigorous debate about it. This morning all major British media outlets -- the BBC, Independent, Times and Guardian -- are running stories about the American use of chemical weapons in Iraq. The American media and Congress have virtually put the issue under the rug. And there goes Bush treating the world to a sermon about blessings of democracy! As I said above, maybe we should try to fix our democracy before sending salesmen like Bush out to peddle it abroad.

Mustafa

Steve Clemons seems to have juxtaposed two unrelated issues on his site (CBO Director) and Wilkerson.

But in thinking about the government's fiscal management and the economic policy structure and compare it to the intelligence management structure and the constant ineffectual reforms, it seems easy to see why our intelligence never improves, no matter how many layers of bureauracracy are created in the Executive Branch.

................Fiscal/Econ........Intelligence
..............-------------.......------------
Cabinet Level....Treasury..........DOD/DOS/NID
White House.......OMB.................NSA
..................CEA
Legislative.......CBO.................zip
...............Oversight/GAO........Oversight
Commission........FED................ zip

The fact of the matter is that there is a tremendous amount of horsepower devoted to economic and fiscal management. And the CBO/GAO plus the Fed provide much needed professionalism and discipline both directly and indirectly (by fear of exposing ideological drivel as such) to this area.

But on Intelligence there is no such equivalent structure so that Congressional leaders never get independent professional assessments of the data being provided.

Imagine a Zbigniew Brzezinski or person of that professional stature and experience heading up a Congressional Intelligence Office (CIO) to use objective criteria to evaluate intelligence briefings and require a certain thoroughness/ discipline that is clearly not evident now or in the past.

Unless Congress reforms itself to provide a credible counterweight to the Executive branch in the intelligence area, as it already has in the fiscal/economic arena, the dynamics and the performance will never change.

Not to put a fine point on it, he had his chance and blew it. You don't get mulligans in life.

Wilkerson essentially fully backed the Bush attacks on "Democrat revisionsists," i.e. "We all thought they had WMD." This was really surprizing. Steve, any comments on this aspect of the interview?