You set your own bar for vehemence with your Berger thread. I’m only saying that you should be at least more vehement about the WH failures than Berger’s little episode. I’m only talking about your reactions realtive to yourself. If Berger makes you blow your top, then the WH outing its own mole and allowing aQ suspects to escape should really make you blow your top.
If you hadn’t blown your top about Berger and just expressed annoyance about it, then I wouldn’t say you had to be “vehement” about the WH failures, only that you should be more annoyed by them.
Do you see what I’m getting at? The WH failures or qualitatively worse than what Berger did, so your own reactions should reflect that if you’re being intellectually honest.
You’ve heard the phrase “damning with faint praise”, Mr Moto? Well, what you’ve posted in this thread is more like ”praising with faint damning.”
Not only has the administration screwed up several current intelligence operations, but if our friends the Pakistanis have any reservations about finding and turning over bin Laden himself, we’ve given them the perfect excuse not to: “You burned our operation, and now we can’t find him.” From the political perspective of Bush delivering Osama in an October surprise, that’s just stupid!
Setting the bar unattainably high there I fear. Even comparing the two events is clearly preposterous and anyone who either can’t see that or won’t acknowledge it isn’t open to rational debate. Kudos for your efforts though.
I don’t recall being in doubt as to what your position was.
I was only in doubt about this comment of yours, “It’s hardly the first time something like this has happened.”
This struck me as odd, so I asked, “When was the last time that the WH provided the name of a mole to the press?”
You replied, “There were major SCIF violations during the Clinton administration at the White House. They involved loading classified disks onto unclassified laptops, and hooking those laptops up to classified networks.”
As this wasn’t an example of another time that the WH provided the name of a mole to the press, I asked you, “So, you are equating inappropriately risky behavior (improper computer security) with the deliberate act of informing the world of a mole’s identity, are you?”
I also pointed out reasons why it is unhelpful to try to compare the two issues (Mr. WH-Leaker-of-Khan’s-Identity vs Mr. Deutch) let alone try to equivicate the two scenarios.
AFAICT, you offered no response to this at all.
As a matter of fact, no response to me at all until this post telling me that you think divulging classified national security info is bad. Your post implies that I had at some point said that you did not think that such indiscretion was bad. I, of course, said no such thing.
Also I note that you have apparently agreed that your earlier comparison of critically unsimilar events was unwarranted. To wit:
So maybe you can find somewhere appropriate to put your expletive laden retort to posts I didn’t make.
It’s the sort of ‘evidence’ I put headings like ‘rumormongering’ on when I step out on a limb like that.
FWIW, Pakistan denies it. And their earlier fury that his name had gotten out gives it a certain basic credibility, although it doesn’t make it a certainty.
There’s also a Boston Globe story (finally working its way through the US press, at last):
Read the whole story. BushCo has revealed a LOT of info in the last two weeks, well beyond what was necessary to outline what places were at risk in this alert. Blaming this one on Pakistan doesn’t pass the ‘smell test’, IMHO.
There are a couple points I haven´t seen mentioned here so far.
First that if I were a reporter and someone in the goverment comes to me and says “hey, look at this!; top secret, maximum security, I´ll leave it over here, all alone wink-wink”, next morning´s headlines wouldn´t be “Khan is a mole”, they would be “Member of the goverment X gives away top secret information”. To begin with for a matter of ethics, being part of such a monumental collapse of intelligence structures is more than I would want to live with, specially if people start to die because of that; second because the alternative headline would probably sell much more. So, IMO whoever got the word from a goverment source was playing along with the original leaker, it was information laundering.
Second, the first long lasting consequence of this that I can think of right now is that the probabilities of recruiting more double agents have gone down the tube; it´s already a damn risky live as it is without your “FRIENDS” throwing you to the wolves; a fucking good reward that Khan got for risking his skin out there. I don´t think the “Al Qaeda mole wanted” ads will get many replies from now on.