One of the constant refrains from the anti-Bush/Left is that the Bush Adminsitration has run rough-shod over bureaucrats in the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon.
The Left has made this charge about the Iraq War strategy, the Bolton nomination, the decision to isolate Arafat, the WMD debate, and troop deployment levels in Iraq - too name just a few.
Let's put aside, for a moment, that these charges probably emanate from disgruntled bureaucrats who don't like the Admnistration's policies. Let's just consider the nature of the attack. The attck presupposes that BUREAUCRATS should have supercedence over the ELECTED LEADERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. This is fundamentally undemocratic. In a democacy the elected leaders LEAD! It's no coincidence that this type of charge is almost always leveled by the Left - because they're fundamentally elitist and anti-democratic; (hence their propensity for politburos, fillerbusters, and panels of experts, AND their distrust of markets; the Left deeply believes that if we only put power into the hands of "our best and brightest" that they would then certainly do a better job managing the economy, for example, than free-markets or the general population. And the Left believes that career bureacrats are "our best and brightest.").
In a functioning democracy the generals, the spymasters and the bureaucrats should report to the elected representatives of the people. Generals must defer to the SecDef and the Commander in Chief, and they must obey ALL legal orders. When they don't, it ain't a democracy anymore!
The Wilkerson's and the Wilson's - and the disgruntled brass in the Pentagon (who ALWAYS want more ground troops, and who oppose "jointness" and Pentagon restructuring) and the disgruntled Arabists at State (who think we should NOT support Israel) and the disgruntled realpoliticians at the CIA (who got nearly EVERYTHING since WW2 WRONG: the USSR's strength; Saddam's WMD programs; Pakistan's bomb; etc.) - are the enemies of democracy. The only reason we hear from them at all is because they take advantage of an MSM which salivates at the prospect of bashing Bush, and RUNS RUNS RUNS with any story which even only has a marginally anti-Bush slant. This is why we've had so much sloppy anti-Bush reporting (from the Gulf Coast to Gitmo to Iraq): if it reinforces their anti-Bush bias, then the MSM runs with a story before they have even checked it out.
Sadly, a lie repeated often enough and loudly enough often gets believed - like Wilson's BOGUS Niger charges, which are not only FALSE, they're absolutely IRRELEVANT to the Iraq War; (Bush's SOTU did NOT refer to Niger, or cite CIA intel; it referred to Africa and British intel - intel which Britain maintains is accurate. IN ADDITION, this SOTU was delivered THREE MONTHS AFTER the Congress gave Bush autority to make war on Iraq; it couldn't have influenced ONE SINGLE SOLITARY VOTE IN CONGRESS!).
Yet the Left - and many in the fickle center - act as if Bush lied about Saddam's nuclear ambitions, and as if this "LIE" misled us into war! This is false. And no matter how many people Fitzgerald indicts - or if he indicts no one, or the Veep or Miller or Russert- or Wilson, himself - nothing will change this fact. Or the fact that ousting Saddam has already had extremely positive effects: Egypt has had a major infusion of democracy (as have some other Arabs nations - like Kuwait and Qatar); Lebanon is free; Iraq has a constitution; Saddam is on trial; Syria is on the verge; and Iran is surrounded.
That Leftists ignore these FACTS and instead focus on the lies and distortions of partisan bureaucrats is testament to the Left's reactionarieness and their uselessness.
