View From The Middle
It Seems "Incompetence" Is The Operative Word Lately
By Charles Rogers

We all knew things weren't too good in the intelligence (with a small "i") of the Bush administration as soon as, well, as soon as the year 2001 got here, although we didn't look too closely at the time because things were sort of rolling along smoothly enough with Mr. Bush holding the reins. It didn't matter to us…too much…that former General Colin Powell was Secretary of State and, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at his side; nobody really took any account of how things were going.

Then came 9/11/01, which shook us out of our reverie and woke us up to the fact that there's a world out there full of a lot of people who don't like us. Until then, it seemed we were always thought of as "the good guys," who, presumably, could do no wrong; kind of like the John Wayne of the world.

And that's just about when things started not go-ing right.

Besides all the usual political rigamarole we had to put up with, our administration depended on a lot of people they thought, at the time, were competent, such as the CIA; such as Rumsfeld, who was just edging for a fight; such as the Department of Home-land Security, an offshoot of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As I said, we had to depend on these people to continue proving that we are relatively beyond reproach, at least in our own minds.

Do you remember when President Bush, wearing his fighter pilot gear, jumped onto that ship and stood under the "Mission Accomplished" sign? Hey! It showed we still had it, right?

Oops! That "dependable" CIA, searched and searched for those weapons of mass destruction and, well, need I say they still haven't found 'em? Never mind that, because of their naive gullibility and incompetence, and because of Rumsfeld's and V.P. Dick Cheney's callous warmongering we're still in a war out of which we may not pull ourselves for a long, long time. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Incompetence. Didja ever see it so rampant?

We don't have enough space to cite the many episodes of incompetence that have put us in this position. Just to cite one of the early instances, please remember the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Let's face it...for all intents and purposes the tragedic blame doesn't fall completely on climatological effects; don't forget about FEMA's handling of it ("You're doin' a heckuva job," said President Bush).

Of course, there have been many gaffes since then, with some being just part of fallible human nature. But is it just me, or have there been a bunch more lately? And does it prove further that there are some misgivings about whether we see John Wayne in that mirror anymore?

F'rinstnace…

Now let's see…It was August of last year when Americans were startled to hear that a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber - you know, those big, silver-looking sonofaguns that fly at 35,000 feet and higher and leave long, white contrail tracks in the sky - flew a direct flight from an airbase in North Dakota to an airbase in Louisiana without realizing they were carrying six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. How did that happen? These were, essentially, nuclear bombs be-ing flown over the MIDDLE OF OUR OWN COUNTRY. Suppose one of the planes crashed???? On Baton Rouge???? In a big, ballooned, mushroom cloud of smoke????

Incompetence. And that was a minor one!

While we have the word "nuclear," at hand, let's check out one of the more recent flaps where we sent a bunch of nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan - instead of helicopter batteries - by mistake.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT COULD MEAN? In case you don't have a world atlas handy, Taiwan is a relatively small island off the southern coast of relatively great big China. Since 1949, when the big China became communist, Taiwan didn't, and for lo, these many years, they haven't exactly been friends; sort of a reverse U.S. vs Cuba.

China is champing at the bit to invade, or at least take over, Taiwan and if they feel Taiwan is being fed nuclear weapon parts by the U.S., it stands to reason they'd feel they have plenty of cause to invade. You know - the weapons of mass destruction rationale.

"Uh, we're sorry," President Bush said to China officials after the gaffe was discovered. "We made a mistake. We didn't mean to send those little packages of nukyewlar stuff. We just confused 'em with four large barrels of helicopter batteries. Heh, heh. Just a little goof, don'tcha know. Heh, heh." As he chuckled, his shoulders went up and down in a shrugging motion.

Incompetence.

Of course, the mistakes are not all nuclear-related. There are instances of incompetence in other departments too.

F'rinstance: The Government Accounting Office (GAO) is still blanching when being reminded of the $85.6 million Homeland Security gave to the Boeing Aircraft people in 2006 to build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Seems that the "fence," which would be one of those science fiction-type jobs with surveillance cameras and sensors and towers along a 28-mile section, at first, would have been right out of a textbook written by George Orwell that would have no one getting in or out without setting off an alarm.

But they didn't figure on incompetence - even of Boeing scientists. According to administration officials, the fence worked so badly that (get this!) the Department of Homeland Security itself has taken over completely!

When announcing the commencement of the project two years ago, the president told reporters the virtual fence was to be the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. Along with other, regular "real" fences, it would stretch about 700 miles along the border. Now the start of the whole project has been delayed at least three years - so they can get the bugs out.

Incidentally, the Great Wall of China - not "virtual" - stretches a little over 4,000 miles and took, roughly (give or take a century) 2,500 years to build....with competence.