Melvin Goodman is a Former CIA and State Department analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center’s National Security Project. He is the author of the newly-published book Bush League Diplomacy: Putting the Nation At Risk.
Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 commission supports Richard Clarke’s charges to the commission that the Bush administration reduced the urgency of the problem of counter-terrorism–and that the invasion of Iraq marked a major diversion from the “war against terrorism.”
The fall of the Soviet Union handed the U.S. a unique opportunity, as the surviving superpower, to lead the world toward a period of greater cooperation and conflict resolution through the use of diplomacy, global organization, and international law. This great opportunity is being squandered, as the world becomes a more dangerous place.
Apparently, the CIA has returned to the policy world, which calls into question the kind of dope it is willing to provide to the White House.
One week after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told the press corps “This isn’t Pearl Harbor.” No! It is worse.
Reprimands in the Ames case prompted a mass exodus of bitter senior managers, who had refused to accept the need for punishing those who ignored the fact that a Soviet spy had contaminated the agency at the highest levels