The list of embarrassments for the Bush Administration has been cataloged in numerous books - but every once in a while you read something that seems beyond belief, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here is the New Republic’s description (subscription required) of the new leader of the Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP), an understaffed office that was undercut recently by the creation of another agency that the CIA heads to counter terrorism.
After over 15 people turned down the IAIP top job, largely because it was viewed as a second- or third-rate backwater (according to the New Republic), the Administration turned to, who else, I was going to say Mighty Mouse, but that would disparage a perfectly smart, gentlemanly little cartoon mouse - and our candidate had, of course, to lack “intelligence” among other qualifications. Let the description explain itself:
“…the search for someone to run IAIP settled on a former Marine Corps general named Frank Libutti. But Libutti, while an experienced soldier, lacks any intelligence background. And his pile-driving, military style isn’t winning many converts. At a meeting of state homeland security directors at a Virginia Marriott hotel last October, Libutti took the stage as the theme from Rocky blared through a loudspeaker and a laser light show bounced off the walls. He then proceeded to drop and perform one-armed push-ups for the bewildered crowd. Over the course of the conference, multiple sources say, Libutti further alienated the state officials with a crude machismo that caused at least one woman to walk out in disgust.”
This guy rates right up there with other notable (and promotable) generals that help Bush with “Intelligence.” Where does he find these guys?
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