More Evidence that Bushies are Idiots

If you click here, you can read an article from www.cq.com that contains more examples of how the Bush Administration's insistence on governmental employees having a certain point of view led to the mess in Iraq.

Like when Douglas Feith rejected an applicant for a job as head of a special operations unit in the Pentagon. The applicant was Patrick Lang, who had been in "charge of the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s. Later he ran the Pentagon’s worldwide spying operations." Lang had also been a Green Beret who had served three tours in South Vietnam. Now, you think that Feith would want a guy like Lang, but you would be wrong. Lang was apparently rejected by Feith because, wait for it, he spoke Arabic.

Only in the Bush Administration would a person be rejected for a job because that person knew too much about the area in which he or she might be serving. Apparently Feith believed that if a person actually spoke Arabic, then he might be too close to the Arabs and wouldn't back the neo-con's plan to bring a new age of enlightenment to the Middle East.

The article also points out how Lang had discussed Iraq with Wolfowitz before the war. He told Wolfowitz that after the overthrow of Hussein there would be a massive insurgency and resistance to the American military. Wolfowitz insisted that he was wrong and that our invasion of Iraq would start a successful transformation to democracy in the region. We all know how well that worked out.

Of course, given the media's fascination with the personal qualities of politicians and not their competence, this kind of tragedy could happen again. We could elect another anti-intellectual person as President who would staff an administration with ideologically driven boobs. Maybe though in 2008 American voters will be insisting on competence. We can only hope.