In Response to the Queen

Valerie continues to blog up a storm at HuffPo with a new column today providing suggestions on how she would operate the CIA if made queen for a day. Let's take them one by one..

1. Divorce the CIA Director's job from the presidential election cycle.

Although the DCI/DNI are political appointments she points out the inefficiency of her own argument by mentioning the Woolsey anecdote while failing to mention that Bush kept Tenet and nearly everyone criticized it.

2. Don't allow any Executive Branch members to make trips to CIA Headquarters to meet with officers about specific intelligence issues, as Vice President Cheney and Mr. Libby did during the run up to the war with Iraq

Tenet said the CIA was not pressured by these visits, which seemed rather prudent in light of the circumstances and conflicting information. For some reason she failed to mention that Colin Powell had also camped out at Langley before his UN presentation. But this comment was absolutely priceless--"CIA analysts are not dumb". In other words, even though they completely missed 9/11 nobody should dare question their stovepiping brilliance.

3. Put into a place a regulation which says that any military officer designated for the CIA Director's position must resign his commission.

While this sounds prudent it also hints at her animosity towards General Hayden, who just recently had the temerity to bump her off the Charlie Rose Show. It's about the 16 words, though!

Despite the above her last paragraph was perhaps the most telling, highlighted by her "war on terror" scare quotes and TSP rant. Perhaps she didn't realize she was deriding the politicization of intelligence by politicizing intelligence? If so, her act deserves an award.