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November 15, 2004

Long Knives at Langley

Powerline reports that they're finally taking out the trash at the CIA:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.
"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Fabulous news. I've long thought (and written) that the CIA was politicized, Clintonized, and determined to undermine any foreign policy it disagrees with. Trouble is, the CIA is not charged with making policy; it is charged with reporting facts to the President and other executive employees who themselves make policy. Too many times liberals in the CIA have sought to change the facts to further their own political ends; how many times do we need to read some anonymous liberal CIA analyst stating, in his opinion, that an offer from Saddam Hussein to sponsor and host Al Qaeda does not in fact constitute an attempt at cooperation between the two?

You can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts. Too many Clintonoid CIA liberals want just that, and I'm thrilled that Goss (and Bush) have the courage to can them.

The purge will of course be portrayed as a horrible politically-motivated sacking of our best and brightest. But many of these folks violated their oaths -- and occasionally federal law -- to leak to the press and to friendly liberal Democrats.

Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the President. Bush's move is of course political, but so was their nonstop spoonfeeding of classified information to Seymore Hersh. You can't take the politics out of politics, after all, but you can take serial leakers out of sensitive positions.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. They'll be happier working for the liberal media as advisors and on-screen experts, anyway.

Must-read Update: Steve sends along this terrific Q-and-O link. The lefties are in a lather (what else is new?), but it seems Clinton did something similar.

There weren't any blogs then, of course, but I doubt that these newfound admirers of the adversarial-model of the CIA weren't as upset by the Clinton Purges.

posted by Ace at 01:32 PM

Comments

Wow, this is great news for the folks over at 60 Minutes. Soon, they'll have a whole stable of bitter, partisan hacks--er, I mean credible sources willing to smear the Bush administration.

Did i say "smear the Bush administration"? I meant to say "offer thoughtful but hard-hitting critiques of the Bush administration."

Posted by: Sean M. on November 15, 2004 01:51 PM

Clean up the putrid mess at both CIA and State and appoint some solid conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Now that's a legacy...the kind that 60 million+ of us voted for.

Posted by: The Old Coot on November 15, 2004 01:53 PM

About time, by gum.
But Oliver Witless compares this to Russia's Putin clamping down on the news media, only worse, and he links to a site about impeachment.
That's his slogan, "like two tons of crap too stupid." Also, Yahoo news has a headline - "Congress concerned over Turmoil within CIA", which turns out to mean that a couple of democrats (two by name) are objecting. (On the other hand, McCain is quoted as supporting it...)

Posted by: Ira on November 15, 2004 01:53 PM

I guess Valerie Plame shouldn't bother re-applying for her old job, huh?

Posted by: sonofnixon on November 15, 2004 02:12 PM

The wailing and teeth-gnashing has already begun.

Via Instapundit, here is a post at QandO which rounds up some leftist commentaryganda, then follows with a counter-punch.

http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=429

Posted by: Steve on November 15, 2004 02:14 PM

We all know this is long overdue, and short of blackmail, I will NEVER,EVER understand why W kept Tenet and the Clinton bunch on. But I hope we don't wind up now with a bunch of Yes Men. There always needs to be a give-and-take of differing views, no matter who is in power. But again,

THIS IS OVERDUE BY FOUR YEARS!

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on November 15, 2004 03:02 PM

I'm going to have to talk to my cousin, who's in the CIA about this. He's no lib though, don't worry. Silver star recipient from Somalia (Mogadishu). Name didn't make it in the book credits b/c he's an active spook. LOL. Pisser.

Posted by: fat kid on November 15, 2004 03:17 PM

An interesting side thought about all this: Even with the CIA, the MSM, Soros' millions, Mikey Moore-on, France, Germany, and other so-called world leaders arrayed against him, they STILL haven't laid a significant charge of wrongdoing on GWB.

They can carp about how he's handled things, but they got bupkis on him. It galls them to no end, I'm sure. Now, just think if all this energy had been applied to Bill Clinton's foreign connections, Vince Foster's death, or Hillary's handling of files.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! on November 15, 2004 03:47 PM

In other related news, I was skimming NZ Bear's blog ranking and Willis wasn't anywhere on the top 100. Did he lose that much traffic that quickly or do I misunderstand how it works?

Posted by: Elric on November 15, 2004 05:54 PM

He's currently #96 for traffic. I don't see him on the links list, but that's some kind of glitch. He's usually in the 50's to 70's at worst.

Posted by: ace on November 15, 2004 05:57 PM

It's past time for a purge. I wish Angleton was still around for this one. He did not mind making the hallways of Langley run red and sticky.

Posted by: pinky on November 15, 2004 09:16 PM

Now, with Rice at State and Gonzales at Justice, the purges begin.

Let the bleating begin and update your resume.

It's about time.

Posted by: MD on November 15, 2004 09:38 PM

The democrats in the CIA can't say that W didn't give them a chance to keep their jobs. But they've definitely shown that they'd bring down the agency and destroy the credibility of the country for the benefit of their own pathetic party. Maybe we should have that civil war that some of those asshole democrats are talking about. It's time to clean the crap off of our spokes.

Posted by: Gary B. on November 16, 2004 02:23 AM

I'm liking this. With all the complaints about the CIA and intel over the last couple years, how can we not need a purge? Thank them for their service, and show 'em the door.

CNN's spin is running about 50/50... half "a change for a new boss/reality" and half "King George executes loyal subjects". Figures.

Posted by: Jack Grey on November 16, 2004 05:21 AM

As Jonah said over at the Corner, the bureaucracy will whine if it's a good reform or a bad reform. Still, I think it's pretty clear that something needs to be done.

On the other hand, it's probably difficult to find non-partisan Dems willing to work bureaucratic jobs. Something about being dull and boring must lend itself well. (Oops, did I just say this out loud?)

Posted by: austin mls on November 16, 2004 05:44 AM

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Top Headlines

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]