Goss was dumped by a president who doesn't like to fire anyone. That was a sign of how badly off track things had gotten at the CIA. ....

CIA officers regard themselves as professionals, doing a dangerous job for the country. They know they work for civilian bosses. But like military officers, they want to be treated with respect. Though Goss long ago served as a CIA case officer, he arrived from Capitol Hill with a phalanx of conservative aides, soon dubbed the "Gosslings," who viewed the agency as a liberal, leak-prone opponent of conservative causes. That image is mostly nonsense -- many of the people forced out by the Gosslings were ex-military officers who would be tempted to shoot Democrats on sight, and most veterans cheered Goss's effort to stop press leaks. Goss's attacks on senior officers were reckless, and they peeled away a generation of senior CIA managers. Sadly, the Bush White House mostly applauded his jihad on what they viewed as CIA naysayers.

This paragraph rather caught my mind as it captures in many ways a key point of befuddlement on my part on the Jihad the American right wing has been conducting over the past few years (since the Iraq fiasco began) on its own intelligence service - indeed a rather Bolshevik kind of purge mentality if I may with respect to the intel agencies.

Substantively I will say right out that my entire sense of US intel comes from my drinking contacts run into by accident (presumably I am entertaining in person, or maybe their alcohol budgets are smaller than mine), which is terribly limited as a perspective, but perhaps it is significant that since 2001 they have all left that service. Or perhaps not. I do not really know, although because I liked them, my less rational side wishes to claim it must be significant.

Regardless, if I may delve into the realm of superficially informed whanking commentary (but at least admit the same), it is hard to avoid the sensation that the US Gov has driven off a cliff with respect to the rational and effective development of a properly organised and reasonably efficient intelligence infrastructure, and that the present American Administration has displayed a typical level of competence in this area (which is to say none). I will also say that regardless of the justifications and assertions advanced by the Righty American blog commentariat, I find their whinging on about the Agency in question to fairly stink of Bolshy type thinking.

All this is a pity.

Well most of it is, after all, I have due to this Bolshy type purge and incompetent wrecking, lost some of my most colourful drinking partners. (Although probably it is an indictment of their efficacity and utility as intelligence officers that anyone spent time in my company as one can't learn that much over drinks with The Lounsbury as I tend to blither on about business deals that have annoyed me, but no matter).