Quite a list here of who he's meeting with and learning from, and those supposedly "sensible Republicans" are far outnumbered by the usual warmongering criminal ones -- but all is not lost: he's actually read 2 whole books by non-warmongers! (but not spoken to them or met with them or asked them for advice)

A World of Issues Waiting, Obama and His Foreign Policy Squad Brush Up --

... Besides reaching out to Mr. Scowcroft, Mr. Obama has also called former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war. It is unclear what the two men talked about.

Question for the group, asked in honest and open-minded interest:

What "good in the world" can the CIA claim? What, specifically, has it done that makes America safer, and/or the world a better place?

There's a lot of chatter about Obama's pick of Brennan, of whom I don't really know that much, and his experience and position on the use of torture as a valid interrogation technique. I'll leave aside that argument for now (except to say it still shocks me we even have an "arugment" about it, feh) and wonder instead about what we need, what we have and don't have, and what we might and should have, in our premier intelligence agency.

I can run down a pretty long list of CIA failures. Just off the top of my head, they were totally wrong predicting the timing and reasons for the collapse of the USSR; they propped up torturing dictators in South and Central America; they failed to provide anything useful in the criminally misguided effort in Vietnam; they've covered for drug lords and murderers and Nazis, allowing them to go unpunished and even rewarded for their crimes; Osama Bin who?; WMD and Iraq...really, it's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.

So I have a hard time understanding why some people on the left would bother to defend practically anything or anyone associated with today's CIA. Especially after what I imagine to be the usual contamination with cronies and criminals that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's treatment of virtually every government agency. Via CQPolitics, comes this little gem which more or less sums up how I feel about the Agency today:

"Almost anyone working at the agency since [Sept. 11] is tainted," says retired CIA veteran Milt Bearden, a former Pakistan station chief, expressing the facts of life.

"If he wants experience, get an old-timer who left before that. Or go with a completely new face, maybe someone like a [Richard] Holbrooke, though I doubt he'd take it."

I know some people who've worked in intelligence, and I'm not trying to paint with an overly large brush. I understand there is a difference between the Directorates of operations and intelligence, the people who work in them, and what they do. I know that there really are Bad Guys in the world who are on a mission to hurt and kill Americans for all the wrong reasons, and that it makes sense of a nation like ours to have eyes and ears in dangerous places, the better to anticipate groups who would bring another 9-11 to our shores.

But I'm also always most interested in results. So I'm asking: are there any that CIA can point to, and recently, that would convince a progressive like me that CIA is not in need of massive housecleaning and investigation? My mind is truly open on this, if anyone wants to step up and defend them.

2025: the end of US dominance --
the National Intelligence Council global trends review is out, and contrary to 2004's rosy view of 2020-- still dominated by US and with oil to burn--the new forecast sees things very differently. (pdf link to full report at bottom article)

"... the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks". ..."

Executive Order 12333 is a Reagan [genuflects]-era order written to make sure the next Ollie North never gets prosecuted, to permit assassinations (in the jargon, "targeted killings"), and to permit domestic surveillance by the NSA.

One wonders what expanded powers Our Betters could possibly need. But need them they do, or so they tell us:

[Mike McConnell,] the national intelligence director, has won White House approval to begin revising an executive order that lays out each spy agency's responsibilities and the government's protections against spying on Americans.

Unlike the surveillance law, the White House can change an executive order without congressional or judicial approval.

I think it's great that the administration is going to do this now, and I'm sure that the Regent [cough] lawyers down in the basement of Cheney's bunker have already formed a prayer group on it. And I absolutely trust the Bush administration to do the right thing on this. Wouldn't you?

[Reach me that bucket, wouldja hon?]

Some officials familiar with Intelligence Director Mike McConnell's plans, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the deliberations remain internal, said his intent is solely to update the policy to reflect changes in the intelligence community since Sept. 11, 2001, including the creation of his own office.

But other officials, who also spoke on condition they not be identified, said opening the order to changes could lead well beyond that. They said the exercise could threaten civil liberties protections approved by President Reagan following intelligence abuses in the 1970s, and that intelligence agencies will be tempted to expand their powers.

In a recent interview, Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, characterized the effort as an "overhaul" aimed at helping all 16 spy agencies work more closely together. He said the discussions about the order — known by its number, 12333 — are still in the early stages.

McConnell himself has said the authorities of his office need to be adjusted. "We don't have it right yet," he told an audience in April.

Well, gosh. How about we good citizens help McConnell out? Here's a copy of the order. And after careful, thoughtful, prayerful considerations, I've come up with the following changes to the Preamble:  Read more…

I mean, that would just be science fiction stuff. Never happen. But hey, it could happen. And it would be irreponsible not to speculate (Hi, Nooners!):

Concerned about the growing dependence of the nation’s spy agencies on private contractors, top intelligence officials have spent months determining just how many contractors work at the C.I.A., D.I.A., F.B.I., N.S.A. and the rest of the spook alphabet soup.

Now they have an answer. But they cannot reveal it, they say, because America’s enemies might be listening.

And by "America's enemies" they definitely mean "Democrats with subpoena power."

I'm sure the folks in Yurp are glad this guy is going to be in charge of that tiny and unimportant organization called "NATO."

What the hell is going on here?

BEIJING, Dec. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The sudden disappearance of a number of key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation will make it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five countries, The Times reported Wednesday.

Don’t worry you’re covered. The Minority Report is here.
Seriously. I’d love to see old George Stephanopoulos (his name is in the spell check) ask a candidate – what is your position on the great grandson of CARNIVORE determining who gets rounded up? First carnivore, then TIA, now Tangram – the Air Force’s new strategic data mining program.

I'm on the road this week, forgive the light posting. But just to inflame some readers: what do you think? Are women smarter than men? Would you hate me if I said, "yes" most of the time? In all seriousness, I've never seen a poll unlike this one. For some reason, women seem to dislike war and pillage more than men. Why is that?

70 percent of women and 58 percent of men now oppose the war in Iraq.

That's outside the moe. Tell me why you think this should be.

I love it when people quote history, to make an entirely stupid point, and get the history entirely wrong, and then when asked about it by reporters, corrent correct themselves to make their point even wronger. Case in point: Saxby Chambliss, R-CSA

According to Roll Call's source, [At a closed door meeting of the Armed Services Committee] Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn't correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, “If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”

So when I read about stuff like this, all I want to do is laugh/cry at the idea that I'm supposed to be paranoid and afraid. Really, this is our money they're spending, and when they're not sifting through 50,000 of today's phone calls about what to order on the pizza and how Aunt Millie's corns are bothering her again, they're off chasing cheap women in grungy brothels in Central America? I'm supposed to be impressed?

That said, this is bad:

By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Classified military spending has reached its highest level since 1988, near the end of the Cold War, a new independent analysis has found.

Classified, or "black," programs now appear to account for about $30.1 billion, or 19 percent, of the acquisition money the Defense Department is requesting for fiscal year 2007, according to Steven M. Kosiak, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, an independent policy-research organization.

The figure is more than double the amount the Pentagon requested in 1995, when classified military acquisition spending reached a post-Cold War low.