Word: briefing
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What is the proper way to act when you have made a boo-boo on the scale of what Perle and Adelman now admit to? A brief period of silence might be in order, followed by a bit of ideological spring cleaning. If this big idea has turned out to be wrong, isn't it possible that some of their other ideas are also wrong? In fact, maybe their whole philosophy is mistaken. Perle and Adelman are both neoconservatives, or neocons, a group that prides itself on being tough-minded and pragmatic while rejecting liberals as soft and romantic...
...patriots. Although the movie is ostensibly about the World War II battle of Iwo Jima and our government's propaganda campaign around the famous flag-raising photo, Eastwood obviously meant it as a comment on the Iraq war and the cynical machinations of the Bush Administration. I hold no brief for Bush and the Iraq war, but to attack them by sneering at the heroism and patriotism of Americans who served in an earlier, moral war is despicable. Al Ramrus Pacific Palisades, California...
...Richard Lacayo explains in the illuminating essay that accompanies this one, the company built its lustrous reputation two decades ago in its intermediate stage between Janus the movie distributor and Criterion the DVD producer: as the Voyager label in the brief, glorious age of laser discs. Voyager was noted for the care its took in reproducing, sometimes restoring, pristine print quality. In graphics and production, the discs had the elegance of art books; they were the first coffee-table movies...
...size of the CIA. Gates also distrusted bold initiatives. When Casey set up the Counter-Terrorism Center, the warhorse he was going to ride into battle against the terrorists, Gates was nowhere to be seen. When I worked at the Counter-Terrorism Center and was summoned upstairs to brief Casey on a particularly wild operation, Gates wasn't there. It wasn't because he wasn't welcome. He was busy running the CIA, taking care of the boring details - details Casey was delighted to delegate...
...creation of the Homeland Security Department and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also Presidents tend to overreach more when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government. Think of President Clinton's failed campaign to create universal health care in 1993 and President Bush's brief flirtation with radically restructuring Social Security in 2005; in both cases the Senate derailed legislation with the threat of a filibuster. It's also possible that when power is shared in Washington, individual members feel less secure and are more focused on the first priority of every office-holder...