As Tony explains here, the just-passed intelligence reform bill is a dog’s breakfast. The best news about its passage is that Duncan Hunter (House Armed Forces Committee Chairman) managed to neuter it at the last moment. By inserting the wording that the NID - the new National Intelligence Director or Intelligence “Czar” -- in carrying out his duties "shall respect and not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of the departments," Duncan made sure that a good General Counsel from a subordinate
Agency/Department can drive a Humvee through an NID directive if need be. --JW


So it is to be a Czar of all the Intelligence Services. All the president's men have engulfed the remaining opposition to the intelligence reform bill and seen it passed with strong bipartisan support. Like its namesake, The Czar of all the Russias, our new czar is likely to begin what will become a very mixed record.

If you think the fighting has been rough in Fallujah, wait until you see Washington in the springtime. President Bush's early personnel decisions for the second term suggest that he is preparing, unilaterally, to take on not only our foreign enemies, but also the Democrats and Washington's most cunning and vicious bureaucracies-all at the same time.

With the nominations of Condoleezza Rice at State, Porter Goss at CIA, Donald Rumsfeld (or an equally tough replacement) at Defense and Stephen Hadley at NSC, the president has created an all-Patton foreign and defense team. Moreover, he has a team that understands that among the necessary targets of their firepower must be, not only our foreign enemies, but also the slouching, sly, insubordinate bureaucrats under their chain of command.

Whether he intended it or not, John Kerry's much commented upon statement - that terrorism should be reduced to a nuisance like prostitution or gambling -- has engaged the central issue of this presidential campaign. His statement was neither an accident nor as easily dismissed as many people have asserted. Rather, it reflects the institutional policy of the CIA, and is at the heart of the almost open warfare between the Bush White House and the CIA.

The political class's Edwards-huffing is like a summer heat rash -- it is mildly irritating but should subside in about a week: Wear loosely fitted clothes, keep out of the heat and ease your way through an adequate provision of gin, tonic, limes and bitters. Tropical drinks served with little umbrellas are acceptable substitutes. Now would be an excellent time to catch up on your genuine summer fiction reading (in other words, avoid Edwards media commentary for a week, which is not quite fiction, nor quite non-fiction. It is not so much fiction as it is faction.)

Jack Kennedy would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe." For Kennedy: "Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it."

It is ironic that in this time and in this place, the direct descendent of those words, and the virile passions they convey, can be found coming from the mouth and heart not of the Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, but of his opponent, the Texas Republican George W. Bush.

Yesterday, addressing the den of jackals, thieves, petty dictators and other international flotsam -- which goes by the name of the United Nations General Assembly -- President Bush echoed the brave, necessary words of the once Prince of Camelot:

The latest proposed victim in our struggle against terrorism is Army Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, recently named Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. His mission is to reinvigorate the search for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other leaders of global terrorism. By training and experience, he is marvelously prepared for his new duties - having risen from a Delta Force commando to top-secret Joint Special Operations Command, through the CIA, to command of the Army's Special Forces. For a quarter century, he has been fighting terror with his bare hands, his fine mind and his faith-shaped soul.

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the righteous outcry over Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis's comment that "It's fun to shoot some people," made about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the loud complaints from various leaders of special ethnic interest groups belly-aching about it.

Well, actually, it is "fun" to shoot some people - and all of us who have ever waited through an hour and a half movie, or read some 300 pages of a thriller, to the point when the bad guys finally get their comeuppance know this perfectly well.

In the American South, William Faulkner once wrote, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past. This may become truer the farther south one goes.