There is another thread that has as its subject the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Both parties are constrained by long term perceptions that may or may not be valid.
The Republican, despite running huge deficits in the 1980s and this decade which are the real source of our national debt (as opposed to the claim that it is 1960s social spending programs) have very successfully been able to paint democrats as the tax and spend party. (Yes, I concede that Democrats are more likely to raise taxes when that is necessary to pay for things)
Another such place is the issue of national security. Here the democrats are depicted as soft and incompetent. Here the Republicans are virile and vigilant, so the story goes.
I would like to start hearing all of the squawking about a president being soft on security in the light of these stories about intelligence leaking out of our supposed black hole in Guantanimo. If the Repubs are so good at this stuff, how do things like this happen? So please, show that you are a balanced person. If you rained bile down on Clinton for allowing the Chinese to steal some of our missile intelligence, don't spare the rod. Spew some venom at the hapless team supervised by the Bush administration that allowed this to go on.
Airman detailed to Cuba despite suspicionsQUOTE
Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is charged with espionage for allegedly e-mailing classified information about the prison camp to an unspecified "enemy" and planning to give other secrets about the prison to someone traveling to Syria. He is one of two members of the military at the prison camp in Cuba to be arrested during an investigation of possible security breaches there.
The other suspect, Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain, is being held without charge at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Al-Halabi, 24, is behind bars at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations has been keeping track of al-Halabi since November 2002, before he was sent to the prison camp, OSI Special Agent Lance Wega wrote in applying to a California federal court for a search warrant. A federal magistrate in Sacramento granted Wega's request for a warrant to collect a package al-Halabi sent from Guantanamo Bay to his home address at Travis Air Force Base.
The Air Force began investigating al-Halabi "based on reports of suspicious activity while he was stationed at Travis AFB and also while deployed to Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay," Wega wrote.
We sent a guy who was under investigation for suspicious activity to Guantanamo Bay.
Is this a reasonable intelligence failure that happens in the real world, or is it an example of incredible incompetence.
I did not rain down bile on Clinton for the Chinese breech of our intelligence. Even though we were then not in a state of national crisis in the middle of a so-called war on terror, I will not call Bush a threat to our national security in this case.
This is yet another failure of our intelligence system. The failures seem to happen whether a Republican or Democrat is called Mr. President.
I hope some of you who are more hard lined about security interests than I am will vent a stronger gale force wind of wrath than I just did.