Careful There, Sarcastro

I am a technology retard, so I don't know if the headline will still be there an hour from now, but over on Talking Points Memo (what my link calls "Democratic Milquetoast") an AP article on Mike McConnell's request for more funds and more powers for US intelligence-gathering efforts has been labeled thusly: "McConnell Needs More Spying Power--To Fight the Cold War."

Well, snigger me timbers.

Leaving aside the question of whether we, American citizens, would want the government to be able to monitor communications inside the United States, at the root of McConnell's request is the assertion that Russia and China are spying on us (and, US) and so the American intelligence community wants to spy on them--while, of course, limiting our exposure to their efforts. While I applaud the liberal blogger's snarky categorization of McConnell's worldview--which may, for all we know, focus too much on "old" enemies instead of all the new ones we've made in the last 10 years--here's the thing about what McConnell said:

he's not wrong.

One of the great legacies of this administration that will only grow over time, becoming clearer to the point that every historian one day will point it out as though it should have been obvious, is the mishandling of Russia, particularly, but also China by the Bush ninnies. This being particularly egregious when the head moron has as his sidekick a woman, Condolleezzaa (I give up; just add some more letters) Rice, who touts her credentials as an "expert" on Russia every chance she gets. Yet, she hasn't done a goddamn thing about the growing re-Soviet-ification of Russia under Putin, added to the fact that, for all her travels and summits, not one of them has produced any tangible benefit to the United States. I, for one, have mocked Rice for her insistence that her Russia "expertise" translates to competence in foreign policy in general, but really, lady: the one nation you claim to have the bona fides to understand is one of the ones that is pressing hardest to depose us--not now but as soon as possible--as the world's most aggressive state.

So, in my kind, McConnell ain't wrong. You'd have to be blind not to see that China and Russia are big, nasty threats to us in most every way. Throw in Israel, and you've got the US's spy nightmare and nobody's doing a damn thing about it, especially those most qualified--at least in their own minds--to take action. Now, I take US intelligence's self-constructed mythology ("The Good Shepherd," anyone? All Tom Clancy books?) as proof that the CIA, NSA, and spooks in general have created far more failures than successes, but to cite their incompetence as proof that we have nothing to fear from other nations (who, again, are trying actively to knock us off the highest perch) is asinine.