Don’t Kick ‘em Out; Kick ‘em Upstairs

An old rule in bureaucracies is this: if someone screws up, you kick them upstairs. You don’t kick them out. You just put them someplace where they can’t do any more harm. That way, the person who hired the screw-up in the first place avoids at least some embarrassment. As a bonus, time is bought to spin events so as to cause even less embarrassment to whoever hired the screwup.

Mr Bush is an apparent believer in a variation of the kick ‘em upstairs rule. Difference is, that Mr Bush thinks things are going just fine in Iraq. He sees no screwups at all. But he’s still shifting some his old downstairs appointments upstairs, where they will no doubt retain their proven ability to do the same kind of harm they’ve being doing for the last four years. If not worse.

Case in point: Condoleezza Rice. Ms Rice, the president’s national security adviser has been nominated to be Secretary of State. She’s being kicked up stairs in spite of her poor record downstairs, as an advisor to the president. According to her testimony before the 9-11 Committee, she was apparently unaware , prior to the WTC attacks,  of any possible terrorist threats against the US. This despite warnings circulating around US security agencies for years.

Another thing.  Ms Rice was originally hired by Mr Bush to give him some rudimentary training in foreign policy. Unfortunately for  Ms Rice, her training as a Sovietologist, became essentially worthless, once the Soviet Union disappeared. No matter.  After 9-11, she apparently stopped advising Bush about the Russians, and started selling and  parroting the administration’s line about WMD.   Iraq was a  terrible threat to the US she said, and world peace will be endangered, if the US did not immediately take out Saddam Hussein.

It makes you wonder what she was doing to earn her salary from the period the Soviet Union collapsed to 9-11-2001.

As it turns out, not much of anything. At least not with respect to national security. She certainly didn’t advise the president of anything worthwhile during the period of her appointment as presidential advisor.

And she clearly was unconcerned about terrorism as a serious  issue for the US.   This, according to Richard Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism in the White House under both Mr Clinton and Mr Bush.

Which is a pretty odd thing for a national security advisor. Even after the WTC attack she didn’t seem to have much of a grasp as to  what precisely was going on with regard to terrorism. Attempts by the press over the last four years, to get any concrete information from Ms Rice about any matter concerning national security policy were generally fruitless. In press conferences, Ms Rice has perfected the talent of talking a lot , but saying nothing specific which might show she had some idea of what was going on in the world.

Just the qualifications for a Secretary of State. At least in a Bush administration.

Another example of someone being kicked upstairs and being put into positions where, nonetheless, you can still do a lot of harm, is the recent elevation of Rep. Porter J. Goss (14th Cong. District, Fla.),  to the position of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr Goss has  brought with him some partisan hacks who are intent on turning the CIA into some kind of political propaganda arm of the president. Mr Goss's accomplishment so far, has been  the resignations of several top-level CIA officers, who in contrast to Ms Rice and Mr Goss, actually know something about terrorism and terrorist threats.

What a way to start a new administration.

Now check this out:

Mr Bush is apparently going to keep the remainder of his neocon incompetents in positions where they can continue to  dream away American and Iraqi lives for a visions of  an American empire in the Middle East. As of today, the neocons, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; I. Lewis Libby the vice president's chief of staff, Elliott Abrams, National Security Council staffer, Douglas J. Feith ,Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and  Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense,  are all going to be employed at the same old jobs.  Which means they'll be  pushing the same old policies which have produced the current mess in Iraq.

For another four years. 

Punditwalla--