The CIA Ate My Homework

Before, after, and during George Tenet's resignation, the standard explanation for anything this adminstration is caught doing awry is, "It's the CIA's fault."

I have no doubt that - with word out that Colin Powell is very upset over the incorrect report telling us that global terrorism was way down when it was in fact way up (who the hell would have thought it was down?) - the CIA will be charged with supplying the wrong information on the terrorism report, too.

The problem is, however, that while they can keep saying "it's the CIA's fault", these same people always cite - with a straight face - intelligence from the CIA when they want us to believe that Osama bin Laden is here, that we need additional funding there,or that we should be scared shitless over a new terror alert.

It would seem counterintuitive that you can have it both ways: the CIA both incredibly incompetent and yet our most credible source for information.

Now, since I was a kid, I've always been sort of allergic to the whole idea of the NSA and CIA and all the spooks therein. Yet I'm strangely now in the position of feeling a degree of sympathy for the CIA - and Tenet himself - because they're always the fall guy. Always. Condi does nothing wrong. Rummy is brilliant. Ashcroft is astounding. Bush is brilliant. But the CIA, while it can do no wrong, also can do no right.

I find this paradox sort of non-useful. What about you?