FROM THE TEMP DIRECTORY

I occasionally bookmark a page that I mean to come back to in a directory named TEMP. Here are a couple of the pages I found interesting.

A rising tide that lifts only yachts
By Ezra Klein,
EZRA KLEIN is a writing fellow for the American Prospect.
He also writes a blog at www.ezraklein.com.
May 5, 2006

If you dig a bit deeper than the base growth statistics, though, the picture clarifies considerably. Our economy has grown so starkly unequal that the statistician's view now says surprisingly little about the average American's experience. Last quarter may have seen 4.8% growth, but hidden in those numbers was a depressing factoid: Wages had only grown 0.7% slower than housing, health or gasoline costs. That's been the story of the last few years, a rising tide that lifts only yachts. It used to be that economic growth ensured wide benefits across society. But the last four years of economic expansion have been historic for the steadily increasing poverty rate a depressing sign that inequality has so split the poor from the rich that the two hardly inhabit the same economy.

The economy, despite what some economists and politicians think, isn't an abstraction, it's an experience. And the average American isn't experiencing 4.8% growth; he's experiencing increased income insecurity, wages lagging behind prices and deteriorating health benefits. Strong as the growth might be, a strong economy isn't much good if it's using those biceps to pummel the working class.

The Yes-Man
President Bush sent Porter Goss to the CIA
to keep the agency in line. What he's really doing is wrecking it.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 11.10.05

Since Goss took over, between 30 and 90 senior CIA officials have made their exit, according to various sources, some fleeing into retirement, others taking refuge as consultants. Others, unable to retire, have stayed, but only to mark time at the agency. Morale, already low after several years during which the CIA was accused of a series of intelligence failures related to September 11 and Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, is now at rock-bottom. The agency's vaunted Near East Division, in particular, which served as the "pointy end of the spear," as one CIA veteran put it, in simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the global war on terror,has been decimated.

Many of those who remain inside the CIA are distraught, convinced that their work is wasted on an administration that doesn't want to hear the truth. "How do you think they feel?" asked one recently retired CIA officer with three decades of experience. "They're watching a fucking idiotic policy, run by idiots, unfold right before their eyes!"

In fact, analysts were pressured, and heavily so, according to Richard Kerr. A 32-year CIA veteran, Kerr led an internal investigation of the agency's failure to correctly analyze Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, preparing a series of four reports that have not been released publicly.

Unlike the outside reports that looked at the same issues, however, Kerr's concluded that CIA analysts felt squeezed -- and hard -- by the administration. "Everybody felt pressure," Kerr told me. "A lot of analysts believed that they were being pressured to come to certain conclusions." I talked to a lot of people who said, "There was a lot of repetitive questioning. We were being asked to justify what we were saying again and again. There were certainly people who felt they were being pushed beyond the evidence they had."

On and off the record, other former CIA officials say that despite the pressure, dissent against the White House was rife within the agency. The strongest opposition centered in the CIA's Near East Division, few of whose officials supported the idea of war with Iraq. They clashed often with WINPAC, the CIA division focused on weapons proliferation and the part of the agency most responsible for the heavily skewed conclusions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Within weeks of Goss' arrival, it was clear that the agency had been plunged into turmoil. One after another, top CIA officials bolted: first McLaughlin; then Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, the top two officials in the Directorate of Operations; Jami Miscik, who headed the Directorate of Intelligence, and her deputy, Scott White; Buzzy Krongard, the CIA's executive director; Mary Margaret Graham, a senior counterterrorism official; the heads of the European and East Asia divisions; and many more. Pillar, the Middle East national intelligence officer, took retirement. Many others, less prominent, also quit, were fired, or took jobs as consultants. Rockefeller, watching from the sidelines, said Goss "faces rumors of a partisan purge at the CIA."

No section was harder hit than the already rattled Near East Division. At least two consecutive Baghdad chiefs of station have quit or been fired, and division'ss staff at headquarters has been nearly swept clean of its experienced officials.

The partisan, pro-Bush nature of the current regime at the CIA was underlined when Goss issued a widely leaked memorandum telling agency employees to "support the administration and its policies in our work," adding, "As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."