Tom,
You hit this one on the head with "Personally, I wish the general worried a bit more about the damage done to America by the government's embrace of torture as a policy under President Bush."

Sadly, no one seems to care.

The bottom line, “moar war, moar defense spending!”

1.) Considering that we came extremely close to having a president who liked to sing ditties about bombing them, I can hardly blame the Iranians for wanting a nuclear deterrent, even if that is what they want.

2.) Regarding comments on China’s irresponsible behavior, yeah, glass houses and rocks… But the US should do its best to take advantage of a Chinese implosion, but the US should not intervene to protect the interests of American individuals and corporations. For 100 years the name of the game is collective protection of private ventures in risky markets, many of our most egregious actions overseas are the result of this policy. This needs to stop.

3.) Institutions and individuals within the government have been salivating over controlling, reforming the internet for years. While concerns are genuine, I question motives.

4.) Mexico, this point is a real prize. Legalization is simply crazy talk. It makes far more sense and is a more serious, and profitable for some, solution to expand operations in Mexico. As Governor Conan the Barbarian and other folks said recently, if we legalize nobody will take us seriously. At some point a brave enough politician needs to point the finger at the prison industry and too many Americans, who are reactionary, authoritarian hypocrites (Ashcroft and states rights).

5.) What if we study terrorism and the answers we get back aren’t the ones we want to hear? After all, we can’t take the terrorists literally unless we need an excuse to beef up budgets. More university programs sounds like a recipe for more yes men, particularly as these will be grad students terrified of losing funding, more legitimacy for a fairly narrow debate whose boundaries have been predetermined.
Point six brings us back to the beginning, “moar war, moar intervention, moar money.”

On torture, the US' hands were dirty pre-Bush, there is this thing called School of the Americas.

Hayden’s remarks are just run of the mill conventional wisdom one could pick up at a high tone bar. I read Amanda Pfabe’s interview twice just to make sure I wasn’t missing something but even on the second reading Hayden comes off as less than insightful and very predictable. Any run of the mill O5 or O6 attending war college somewhere could have whipped this up on the back of an envelope. If Hayden remarks are reflective of the best judgment of the varsity team at CIA then we have some serious problems.

Out of curiosity, what would you list up there in your top 6 (and which one would you replace it with)?

I wrote this a while back, but what the Hell.

Cheney At The Bat

Things looked extremely rocky for the Neo-Cons that day,
Clinton was in office, common sense ruled the day.

If only, Cheney, mighty Cheney could take a whack at that
they'd put even more money on big Oil with Cheney at the bat!

So Chalabi proceded Cheney and likewise so did Niger cake,
the former was a devil the latter was a fake.

But to the wonder of all, Chalabi didn't fall,
and over Yellowcake - the Press took in it all.

And when the Neo-Cons saw what had occured
US Troops were on the Iraqi border, our allies were the Kurds!

Then from five thousand Neo-con throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
it rumbled through the Wash Post, it rattled in the Jour-nel;

it pounded through on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat;
for Cheney, mighty Cheney, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Cheney's manner as he stepped into his place,
there was pride in Cheney's bearing and a smile lit Cheney's face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
no stranger in the crowd could doubt t'was Cheney at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt.
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.

Then, while the writhing Osama made a tape to ship,
defiance flashed in Cheney's eye, a sneer curled Cheney's lip.

And when the fatal liners had come hurtling through the air,
and Cheney stood a-watching them in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the responsibility unheeded sped --
"That ain't my style," said Cheney.

"Three thousand dead!" the umpire said.
From the benches, black with apathy, there went up a muffled roar,
like the beating of the storm waves on a stern and distant shore.

"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted the FOX News faithful on the stand,
and it's likely they'd have killed him had not Cheney raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity, great Cheney's visage shone,
he stilled the rising tumult, he bade the game go on.

He signaled to Osama, and there was a tape anew,
but Cheney still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two!"

"Fraud!" cried the Fox News Faithful, and echo answered "Fraud!"
But one scornful look from Cheney and the Christian Right was awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
and they knew that Cheney wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer has fled from Cheney's lip, the teeth are clenched in hate.
He pounds, with cruel violence, his bat upon the plate.

And now Osama holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
and now the air is shattered by the force of Cheney's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this formerly favored land the sun is shining bright.
A funeral moves forward somewhere, and somewhere there's a fight.
And, somewhere men are dying, and little children bleed out,

And there is no victory on Main Street USA --
mighty Cheney has snuck out.
.

No one seems to speak about what is the obvious concern...we have no real understanding on a broad scale of the physical dynamics of the world outside the command structure be it in war, politics or business. We have automated senses far beyond our ability to analyze content. We are procedural savvy and can work the equipment. We are literate reading the writing and visually perceptive watching the GUI. We know where we are by GPS. We have mastered the manipulation of data into competent reports for opinion manipulation or to back fill a decision made long ago for other reasons.

In short we have thru virtual applications produced B.S. without its real smell. We are satisfying ourselves in producing lies or passing ignorance as science or truth to ourselves without fear of the consequences. We don't think we need a Daniel who in a foreign culture or at the sumptuous banquet can read the writing on the wall: mina, mina, shekel, half-mina.

So maybe we need to ponder as did Jonathan Swift in "The Run Upon The Bankers"t:

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall. Source: Wikipedia

Tom, do you think a high altitude General Officer or a party flak or anyone in the Senate or House would understand this?

The thing that must worry not just Hayden but all CIA directors is what Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence under Bush told Obama soon after his victory in the November 2008 presidential elections i.e. ‘Pakistan is a dishonest and untrustworthy partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of its intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Taliban‘ according to Bob Woodward‘s book ‘Obama‘s wars‘.

Pakistan has NOT stopped being a ‘dishonest and untrustworthy partner’. Hence Tom Rick’s AfPak bottom line about ’political and economic stability in Pakistan’ should be changed to ‘Pakistani Army calls real shots and its unwillingness to go after Haqqani’s HQN and Mullah Omar’s QST (now moved to Karachi) dooms US war effort in Afghanistan’.

"We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was "so the cancer doesn't spread there" as per same Wooward book.

As long as Obama’s US military continues to mollycoddle Pakistan, ‘terrorism cancer will spread from Pakistan to Afghanistan, just as it happened in 1996’.

General Hayden was picked by Bush because he would be a loyal shill and parrot anything handed to him. It's truly amazing that he continues to talk about an Iran nuclear weapons program, evan while his own agency clearly stated in 2007 and also again in 2009 that there is no evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.
His comments about the drug war in Mexico seems to ignore the well over 100,000 dead in Iraq caused by the destabilization of their country or the many thousands of innocents killed in Afghanistan. His philosophy of "Never admit that you are wrong" should have him in house arrest forever.

Do you think, if Afghanistan had been left to the Taliban all these years, there would not have been a great deal of suffering and death of the population? I think it was the right thing to so and stay, until a stable gov. can take over, or the locals want us out.

Wonder what Leon Panetta's six worries are this morning...

Does Bouazizi represent another "intelligence failure"?

Will the report from whatever commission eventually reviews all this conclude it was a simply a "Black Ibis" event?

"Predictable = preventable" is a risk management principle... does it hold for foreign policy?

How may fiascoes, snafus, and stupidities must be endured before the American Mind wraps itself around the concept of Hubris?

If China is "a teenager whose strength has outstripped his judgment, experience, and wisdom" . . . what in the world is the United States, having invaded Iraq based on lies and misrepresentations, and having invaded Afghanistan when the Taliban was willing to negotiate turning over bin Laden?

If China is a juvenile delinquent, the US is a serial killer . . . call in the Criminal Minds team.