"Impotence is the hallmark of strength"

[A_Possum]

Incisive commentary about Bush's endorsement of a National Director of Intelligence, from The Medium Lobster at Fafblog

The only way to make certain a National Director of Intelligence would have the power to accomplish any good is to make him truly independent - by severing as many real ties to the White House and to the intelligence community as possible. In fact, the Medium Lobster believes the president has not gone far enough, allowing the proposed NDI to give budgetary "input" to the agencies below him. If the president wants a truly independent director, the Medium Lobster suggests that the new director's office be as far removed from Washington as possible, preferably on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas or a very tall pole in the desert, cut off from all lines or methods of communication, where the National Director of Intelligence can meditate on intelligence and the nature of intelligence, and arrive at a priori truths regarding threats to the nation's wellbeing.

[bullimiami]

1. war is peace.

and hate is love.

welcome to George orWells universe.

[lanparty]

2. I think they've got this ALL messed up!!!!

They need to move to a producer/consumer model on intelligence. We need multiple agencies to ensure that no one person can monopolize intelligence gathering capability and turn it upon the US populace in order to accumlate power (no more J Edgar Hoovers).

Rather, we gathering capabilities that are stovepiped. The analysts would be consumers of that information and have access based on clearance levels. They would place "orders" for intelligence. The intelligence gathering arms would simply fill orders and place it into databases for the analysts.

In this way, you would have independent chains of command that would act as a check and balance of the other. It would eradicate the stovepiping problem because you could still have two distinct domestic (against foreigners), foreign and military (against foreign military capability) intelligence gathering apparatus that do NOT need to interoperate since the analysis capability will have been extruded. The analysts will have access to all the appropriate intelligence sources.