Senior officials at the Pentagon announced today that Adm. John Poindexter will resign soon. Poindexter, a major player in the Iran-Contra scandal and who masterminded the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) program and who created the terrorism futures market, is stepping down because his research with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was becoming too "unorthodox".

My question:
Should Adm. Poindexter have stepped down, or is this the kind of creativity we need at the Pentagon?

Links:
Poindexter to Resign in Coming Weeks
Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA)
Terrorism Futures Market

Poindexter should have been a convicted felon who was barred from holding government positions. not someone placed at the head of a creative counter-terrorism system. Remember he thought selling weapons to Iran and funding freedom fighters in central america against the express wishes of congress was a good way to act in the shadows of the public light. Yeh. let's put him back in charge of things again!

I think Poindexter should have been out of the Pentagon a long time ago, back when he was involved with Iran-Contra. This failure has led to such fine programs as TIA, which is a huge violation of every citizen's privacy and the now defunct terrorist futures market. I can't think of two sicker ideas: Creating a database of the monetary transactions (and other private aspects) of every citizen, and betting on terrorist attacks and assassinations. This guy belongs in a mental hospital, not leading a highly advanced research department.

Poindexter seems to be suffering from premature senile dimentia, and then there are the idiots who listen to him!!!

True story here about a British Admiral during WWII (or WWI) that indicates what happens when people get appointed to their positions.

He came up with the idea of having British fisherman hang around in their boats in the English Channel with black bags, hammers and chisels, to deal with submarines. If the subs surfaced near their boats, the idea was to damage the periscope with the hammer and chisel. Lacking time for that, they would just put the black bag on. That would "blind" the sub unti it surfaced and removed the bag or repaired the periscope.
The Fishermen just hung around the pubs, knowing it was a stupid idea.
So the admiral came up with another idea. He would train seagulls to crap on the periscopes! He was given a staff and sent off to see if it could be done. Word got out, the military was humiliated, and the project was canceled. The admiral got sent off to some dark corner of the universe and kept out of the way for the duration of the war.

Poindexter must be a long lost relative of that idiot.