SNAFU

We've had an attack on the United States; we are in the middle of a war; we see new threats and new violence every day.

And they STILL won't stop the bureaucratic bungling.

What's the sense of allocating all this money, when the people deciding how to spend it are idiots?

"Counterterrorism agencies are shopping for talent at job fairs, dangling generous scholarships and luring staff from each other in a race to overcome a shortage of analysts that may only get worse in the new intelligence overhaul."

Short version: they need people to do intelligence desperately, but there just aren't enough people, and any people they get would require 7 to 10 years to train. And they don't have the slighest idea what to do, so they are setting up booths at job fairs. For intelligence experts.

President Bush ordered in November to double the number of analysts it employs. The agency won't say how that equates to new jobs.

Nor would they say where are supposed to get twice the number of intelligence analysts FROM.

"If you had a hundred, we'd take them," Pat Hughes, the Homeland Security Department's top intelligence official, said in an interview earlier this year. "We have to look, search, test, assess. You don't just get analysts off a tree. ... We need people, but we need good people."

And what do they want them for? To continue screwing up in the vein that they already have:

Among the most classified and most important reports are national intelligence estimates, which draw on information across government and are written by leading analysts at the National Intelligence Council.

It was the council that produced the October 2002 estimate on the threat posed by Iraq, with its overblown assessment on weapons stockpiles.

Well, THAT'S certainly a feather in your cap, boys.

This is the group that said Iraq had gigantic stockpiles of WMD. This is the group that was taken completely by surprise on Sepember 11th. This was the group that spent 4 decades doing almost nothing but gathering intelligence on the Soviet Union, and had no idea that the Soviet Union was crumbling.

But they have no interest, apparently, in examining why their record is one of almost unremitting misjudgments.

They need more people to make MORE misjudgments.

And by the way: we HAD some Arabic translators.

Bush fired them for being gay.

THAT'S the way to encourage employment.

Sheesh.