Considering the Shake-up in Progress

A visual to help you keep it all straight...

As the presidential pathologies become manifest, the president goes shopping. General-shopping, that is. Let me elaborate - in health care, you get a special orientation if you have any contact with psychiatric patients. What this additional training boils down to is this: Sociopathic patients shop the staff for those that can be manipulated and taken in. What the president is doing is a version of this, but he is in the position of power. When he got push-back on his grand scheme for an escalation, he went shopping, and now Dave Petraeus is on his way to Iraq and a fourth star.

I have never met Petraeus, but I know a couple of people who have, and they are quick to point out that his second adventure in Mesopotamia wasn't as successful as his first. They also point out that he is a right prick; but most Officers are, and I've never met a General who wasn't, so that's a moot point.

Moving Fallon to the DNI post is a move that gives me a bit of pause. He is highly regarded as a regional conflict analyst and when I envision him in that post, I envision bombs falling on Iran. You put an Admiral in that post when you have plans for the Navy to get in on the action, probably bombing runs launched from carriers in the gulf, as ground forces aren't available for an overland assault. I have no illusion that he will fail the confirmation process, but I hope a lot of tough questions get asked in the vetting, and I hope a lot of questions about Iran are driven home. IF not, the Senators are not doing their jobs, and we will need to inundate them with emails and calls demanding answers.

I have no faith that these Dionysian followers of Mars have any plans for peace. (Peace dividend? Please! There is so much more money to be made on war! What's a few thousand lives of less affluent Americans? Halliburton has a bottom line to consider!) They have never had a plan for security in the aftermath, and their escalation back to previous troop levels is a shell game.

It's already been tried, for the record. They are proposing we restore the troop levels to what they were when it all started to disintegrate. And let's define their "surge" before we go another step further: The "surge" they envision as solving all the problems and allowing them to "win" is really not a surge, but an overlapping of scheduled deployments. They will achieve it by holding troops currently in-theatre in Iraq beyond their scheduled exit dates, and they will step up the deployment of troops currently scheduled to deploy.

This is, by definition, not sustainable. It is a bad idea that will only serve to ramp up casualties and the sowing of anti-American hostility in the region. But it will not be enough to allow them to "win."

Did he jump, or was he pushed?

Intelligence czar John Negroponte had resigned from his position as the nexus of all sixteen intel agencies operating in the United States government, with a total budget of 42 billion dollars. He is leaving the post he has held since it was created approximately two years ago to be Deputy Secretary of State.

Now, what precipitates the move? Less than a month ago, Negroponte stated that he was inclined to stay in the chief intelligence position until the final curtain was drawn on the Bush administration. Now suddenly he is back at State.

I have seen a lot of speculation that he wasn't up to the Director of National Intelligence position, but I don't think that's what precipitates this move. Remember that Negroponte is a career diplomat, and Condoleeza Rice is a failed Secretary of State.

Firing the useless Rice would direct too much attention on the inherent cronyism and the multiple shortcomings in the Bush administration's many policy failures. Instead, they are attempting to salvage some respect for State by installing a competent Deputy to do the real work of diplomacy. It is painfully obvious that Rice is not up to the task. If I were a wagering sort, I would bet that Negroponte is going back to salvage the ship of State.