According to Plan

How do you destroy something you can't harm from the outside?

From the inside, of course. Billmon:

...As an old lefty who's seen a little of the CIA's handiwork in Central America, I probably should be happy the Cheneyites and their Democratic enablers have managed to fuck the agency beyond all recognition. But I have a sinking feeling that's not going to curb the regime from doing the nasty (most death squad program-related activities having been transferred to Rumsfeld's Special Forces X-Men.) But it's already crippled the parts of the CIA that do things that actually serve the national interest (and my own personal interests) like trying to stop, or at least monitor, the spread of WMD. Awhile ago I heard Keith Obermann on MSNBC asking some ex-CIA agent if Goss had managed to turn the agency into the new FEMA (or words to that effect.) The guy basically ducked the question, but the expression on his face as he did so was quite eloquent.

Heckuva job, Porter. Heckuva job.

However, just because the Night Porter is carrying his own bags out the door, that doesn't mean the White House's war on the agency is over. The leak investigations and political purges no doubt will continue, if more discreetly. The people who have been purged -- taking with them something like 300 years worth of cumulative experience -- aren't coming back. The CIA isn't the new FEMA; it's the new New Orleans, flooded and gutted and left to mold in the mud.

I'd say it would take years for the agency to recover, but my suspicion is that it will never recover, as its missions and resources continue to flow towards the Pentagon, like stars being sucked down a black hole...

And that may be the bigger story here. What's been happening over the past decade -- or longer, according to Andrew Bacevich -- has been a relentless expansion in the authority and functions of the military services, and of their civilian overlords in the Secretary of Defense's office, at the expense of the CIA, the State Department, the NSC and the other bits of alphabet in the national security soup. Years ago I saw an editorial cartoon that showed the Pentagon attached to the White House as its new west wing. We may be nearing the day when it's actually the other way around. And Porter Goss has done his part to bring that day closer.

Which is why Bush and Goss probably should have had a banner hanging over their heads at their news conference yesterday -- "Mission Accomplished." I'm sure Rumsfeld would have been happy to have one made for them.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rumsfeld's avowed policy in Iraq seems to be coming along nicely. The main$tream media has swallowed the meme that the death squads in Iraq are organized by Sunnis and Shiites solely against each other hook, line, and sinker.

On the other hand (and there's always another hand in the multiverse), it's nice to see there's at least the institutional memory of a need to posture like a populist in Congress about the takeover of a civilian institution by the stormtroopers who've ousted most of the honest and legitimate leaders of the armed forces military:

...A senior White House official said Bush did not choose Hayden to pick a fight but would welcome one if it came. "We felt that we're in a position on offense," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the nomination has not been announced. "We have no concerns about a public debate over the terrorist surveillance program."

Not only Democrats expect to use a Hayden nomination to revisit the legality of the surveillance, however. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who has held four hearings on the matter, said he may try to hold up Hayden's confirmation if the administration does not provide more information about the eavesdropping. He said he would try to persuade fellow senators to use the confirmation as "leverage."

"I was briefed by General Hayden and I got virtually no meaningful information," Specter said in an interview. "Now with Hayden up . . . this gives us an opportunity to ask these questions and insist on some answers if the Senate is of a mind to deny confirmation."

Although Hayden has enjoyed a strong reputation among lawmakers from both parties and never encountered confirmation trouble in the past, his selection also would raise questions about the rising military influence over U.S. intelligence and about his ability to be independent from Bush and Chancellor Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

I like that. "If the Senate is of a mind...". Read: "If we don't get nice bonuses from Northrop-Grumman and all the other Company members who need to control the flow of information about this war, the next war, and the one after that..."

If Congress keeps up that attitude, it's only a matter of time until the Chancellor turns his attention to streamlining them the way he's streamlined the rest of the Armed Forces.