Blogbat

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June 07, 2007

Blogbat: The News Before You Knew It

 

 

I hate to make a fuss when I’m right, but…

 

Last week in the now-famous New Yorker piece, Newt Gingrich compared George W. Bush to Jimmy Carter. But who was the first to make such a public comparison? At least, to my knowledge, Blogbat: here, here, here, here, and here (at least!). Go team! ;)  

 

By the way, here's another comparison I think fits: How about John McCain (or John CoCain, as I call him) being the Howard Dean of the Republican Party. It has a certain ring of truth to it, doesn’t it: mentally, politically... heck, they even look a bit alike!

 

Now CoCain has one sound bite to prove it. During the last RNC debate, CoCain actually admitted he was completely against the building of fences at the border. In his own words: “We’re not going to build fences or barriers.” Surprisingly, no lightning struck the building. And you know it’s bad when Hugh Hewett criticizes your lax border security plan on his radio show. Senator CoCain, welcome to political irrelevance.

 

Other favorite political scoops: Governor Bill Richardson running for president last October and Tennessee congressman Herald Ford Jr. thinking about it as far back as 2004. Too bad Ford lost that Senate bid…or not.

 

 

On another topic, today the RIA Novosti news agency announced that head of U.S. counterintelligence Joel F. Brenner, former FBI counterintelligence head David Szady, and a political scientist at the Nixon Center all agree: Russian spy activity has returned to Cold War levels. Blogbat said so six months ago in his video "Chatter" and elsewhere. Naturally, you would assume then (also given all the recent noise about aiming missiles at Europe and known assistance to Hezbollah, Iran, etc.) that this would be just part of an overall picture worthy of U.S. concern. Not so, says Brenner, who appears to be yet another do-nothing world-is-flat technocrat appointed by another such technocrat DNI John Negroponte. Brenner’s philosophy here seems to be that if he can’t see it with his eyes closed, it doesn’t exist. Today’s news however isn’t the first time Blogbat has been right on intelligence policy matters, beginning with describing the CIA (and the entire executive branch) as “dysfunctional” several years ago, just days before it became the popular political buzz word in the media for the agency. There was also the story along the way where IAEA director Mohamed Al Baradei accused Libya as acting as a conduit to transfer nuclear weapons technology to other rogue states, only a few days after I posted that Libya was doing just that. Then there was my prediction that the U.S. would be moving to UAV for much of its aerial reconnaissance. This was confirmed not long thereafter here. Of course there was also the DMAT server hack (very hush-hush) as well as the story I reported of Lockheed-Martin mismanagement and security lapses, which have yet to my knowledge to be widely reported. However, with respect to this most recent development concerning Russian intel, I would like to amend my estimation of Russia’s prowess: I personally suspect that Russian spy activities and manpower have begun to exceed Cold War levels. That said, only time will tell. One thing can be sure however and that is this: until the U.S. expands its counterintelligence capabilities (especially HUMINT - as we’ve been saying for years) it is likely difficult to accurately ascertain the actual state of affairs with Russia or for that matter with China, Iran or other states. That especially is the case now as many resources are being focused on international terrorist cells.

 

 

Posted by Martin at June 7, 2007 01:27 PM

Comments

Posted by: Debbie at June 7, 2007 06:17 PM

Posted by: Angel at June 8, 2007 05:12 PM