BlueRidgeForum

Why Is the Department of Justice Still Failing Military Voters? A former litigation attorney in the Voting Section of the DOJ charged yesterday in a commentary piece “EVERSOLE: Military voters soon to be disenfranchised - again | Panther prejudice not the only problem at Justice” in the Washington Times - -

“According to the Election Assistance Commission, more than 17,000 military and overseas voters were disenfranchised in 2008 because their ballots arrived after the deadline and had to be rejected. Thousands more were disenfranchised when their ballots never arrived or were received too close to the election to be returned. . . . .  A law, however, is only as good as the people who enforce it and, once again, the Voting Section is making decisions that will disenfranchise military voters in 2010. In February, a senior official in the Voting Section informed an audience of state election officials that the waiver provision was ambiguous. The official further expressed the section’s willingness to work with states to submit waiver applications and emphasized the section’s desire to avoid litigation. Since February, the section has continued to advocate a position that would grant waivers freely and even grant them if a state failed to provide a military voter with 45 days to receive and return his or her ballot. In other words, notwithstanding Congress‘ clear mandate, the section continues to argue that military voters should have less than 45 days to receive and return their absentee ballots.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

* * * * *

The Vast Intelligence Bureaucracy?  Former CIA field agent Ishmael Jones in his National Review on Line (NRO) post yesterday  “Why the Post’s Investigative Series Matters” declares - -

“The series’ contribution to national security is not that it provides new information, but that it is the first substantial criticism of the intelligence community’s lack of accountability to appear in a major left-of-center newspaper. Despite the growth of Internet news and talk radio, the New York Times and the Washington Post retain enormous power. Their reporters have developed excellent sources among top CIA officials. These sources, illegally and often for political reasons, provided classified information on such things as Abu Ghraib, torture and interrogations, and Iraq-WMD intelligence failures. In exchange, these journalists did not investigate the CIA’s huge domestic growth, profusion of bureaucrats, lack of financial accountability and fraud, because to do so would have offended their sources. The great majority of the 854,000 people with top secret security clearances thrive within expensive offices located in the United States. The number of heroes protecting Americans by gathering intelligence in foreign countries is tiny.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

On a parallel path, Ralph Peters this morning in his New York Post column “Dumbing down Intel | Bigger isn’t better in spy game” explains, drawing on his extensive experience - -

“The fundamental problem with our national intelligence system is that it assumes that quantity can substitute for quality. The result is a vast, expensive network that’s far less than the sum of its parts…. This week, The Washington Post has done something of a service with a series of articles, ‘Top Secret America,’ chronicling the lack of accountability in our intelligence community. The analysis is a bit superficial, but diligent reporting drives home the point that we’re just not getting our money’s worth. That’s been the case at least since The 1960s. But waste took a quantum leap after 9/11…. Timidity: Bureaucracies aren’t brave. The Army staff, where I worked, was bolder than the cover-your-butt DIA and CIA — but authentic outside-the-box thinking just worried folks. The goal of The intelligence community wasn’t revelatory insight, but consensus — so no one organization could be singled out for blame when things went south. Intelligence work without moral courage is just a welfare program for university grads. Lack of foreign experience: This deficiency keeps getting worse, despite our ongoing wars. The analyst-to-agent ratio is crazily top-heavy — for every serious observer on the ground reporting back to Washington, you have hundreds of analysts at dozens of agencies and headquarters parsing the same reports. And the underwear bomber still gets through.(Underscoring Forum’s.)

* * * * *

How Many U.S. Presidents Have Pretended Iran Is Not at War With Us?  Counter-terrorism expert and historian Michael Leeden in his Pajamas Media Post last week “Hey Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, General Petraeus! Isn’t General Odierno Right?” explained in a - -

“Note to Secretary Gates, General Petraeus, and Admiral Mullen: Our refusal to see the big war that we are actually fighting is making your commanders in the field very nervous. In another one of those little stories that appear just once and then vanish into the pit of Newspeak, General Odierno pointed out that the Iranians are still after our guys in Iraq, and we are making things easier for them. . . . . Let’s put it in simple language: the Iranians are doing everything they can to kill Americans. These are your soldiers and our children, and while the politicians and journalists rarely mention this unpleasant fact, your sworn duty is to defend them, and to strike at our enemies. Your commander in Iraq is obviously trying to get somebody’s attention back here in Washington.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

* * * * *

These are all the kinds of national-security-related questions Tea Partiers and the conservative grass-roots should be considering and raising with their elected officials.  They are too important to be left to “ruling class” politicians (of whatever party) and bureaucrats.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed