| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Brian E. Clark" |
| Date: |
08 Feb 2006 12:08:01 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Bush acting more like Stalin every day |
What do you do when analysts insist on doing their jobs with
integrity? You fire them and replace them with hacks...
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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13814730.htm
State Department sees exodus of weapons experts
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - State Department officials appointed by President
Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them
with less experienced political operatives who share the White
House and Pentagon's distrust of international negotiations and
treaties.
The reorganization of the department's arms control and
international security bureaus was intended to help it better
deal with 21st-century threats. Instead, it's thrown the agency
into turmoil and produced an exodus of experts with decades of
experience in nuclear arms, chemical weapons and related
matters, according to 11 current and former officials and
documents obtained by Knight Ridder.
The reorganization was conducted largely in secret by a panel of
four political appointees. A career expert was allowed to join
the group only after most decisions had been made. Its work was
overseen by Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer who was detailed to
the State Department as senior adviser to former Undersecretary
of State John Bolton, a critic of arms agreements and
international organizations.
--------------------
-----------
Brian E. Clark
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bush acting more like Stalin every day |
08 Feb 2006 02:25:34 PM |
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Brian E. Clark <reply@newsgroup.only.please> wrote in
news:MPG.1e53fd877d320ce7989b2d@newsgroups.comcast.net:
What do you do when analysts insist on doing their jobs with
integrity? You fire them and replace them with hacks...
What integrity? Selling out to the UN is not integrity.
<snip the *****>
whoops, there went the cite...
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"Dems say Repubs imperil civil liberties. David Koresh and Elian Gonzalez
were not available for comment." - Anon.
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bush acting more like Stalin every day |
09 Feb 2006 02:12:21 PM |
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On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 13:08:01 -0500, Brian E. Clark
<reply@newsgroup.only.please> wrote in alt.atheism
What do you do when analysts insist on doing their jobs with
integrity? You fire them and replace them with hacks...
One can't have competance and integrity in the Bush Crime Organization
------------------------------------
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13814730.htm
State Department sees exodus of weapons experts
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - State Department officials appointed by President
Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them
with less experienced political operatives who share the White
House and Pentagon's distrust of international negotiations and
treaties.
The reorganization of the department's arms control and international
security bureaus was intended to help it better deal with 21st-century
threats. Instead, it's thrown the agency into turmoil and produced an
exodus of experts with decades of experience in nuclear arms, chemical
weapons and related matters, according to 11 current and former
officials and documents obtained by Knight Ridder.
The reorganization was conducted largely in secret by a panel of four
political appointees. A career expert was allowed to join the group only
after most decisions had been made. Its work was overseen by Frederick
Fleitz, a CIA officer who was detailed to the State Department as senior
adviser to former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a critic of arms
agreements and international organizations.
Bolton's nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was
nearly derailed last year by allegations that he'd harassed and bullied
his staff. Some State Department weapons experts from offices that had
clashed with Bolton were denied senior positions in the reorganization,
even though they had superior qualifications, the officials and
documents alleged.
Fleitz, who works for Robert Joseph, Bolton's successor, later
telephoned State Department employees who signed a letter protesting the
moves and registered his displeasure, one official said.
The political appointees who crafted the shakeup sought and received
assurances from the State Department's legal and human resources offices
that what they were doing was legal.
But other officials charge that it violated long-standing management and
personnel practices.
"The process has been gravely flawed from the outset, and smacks plainly
of a political vendetta against career Foreign Service and Civil Service
(personnel) by political appointees," a group of employees told
Undersecretary of State for Management Henrietta Fore on Dec. 9,
according to notes prepared for the meeting.
A dozen State Department employees delivered a rare written dissent to
Fore and W. Robert Pearson, the director general of the Foreign Service,
on Oct. 11. Some also sought, but failed to get, a stay from the Justice
Department to stop the plan.
Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international
security, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that the changes might
have been painful to some but were necessary.
"Reorganizations are never easy. They inevitably mean change," he said.
"The reorganization ... was essential to better position us to further
the president's strategy against WMD (weapons of mass destruction)
proliferation and (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's) emphasis on
transformational diplomacy."
"Yet the reorganization also offers important new professional
opportunities for the employees of the State Department," he said.
Much more than personnel disputes are at stake, said the officials who
are critical of the changes.
They said they were concerned that Rice, who announced the changes last
July but apparently hasn't been deeply involved in their execution, will
be deprived of expertise on weapons matters. Among those who have left
is the State Department's top authority on the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, the cornerstone of the international regime to curb the spread
of nuclear arms.
"We had a great group of people. They are highly knowledgeable experts,"
said former Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf, who frequently
clashed with Bolton. "To the extent they now are leaving State
Department employ, or U.S. government employ, it's a real loss to State
Department. It's a real loss to the government."
A half-dozen current department officials expressed the same view, but
spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, they feared
retaliation.
Jonathan Granoff, the director of the Global Security Institute, an arms
control advocacy group, said the loss of State Department arms-control
expertise was especially worrisome because the only mechanism for
verifying U.S. and Russian nuclear arms cuts - the 1991 START I treaty -
is due to expire in less than three years.
That also will eliminate the most effective way of verifying that the
former rivals are abiding by their Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments
to eliminate their nuclear arsenals eventually, he said. "Rather than
nurture our experts, the administration seems to have brought in
neophytes without a passion for progress in this field and, worse,
undermined the international institutions that are most effective in
stopping proliferation," he said.
More broadly, the clash is the culmination of a generation-old battle
over arms control.
In one corner are specialists who argue that negotiated arms agreements
help U.S. security; in the other are those who argue that the United
States should rely mostly on the threat of force, sanctions and other
unilateral steps to curb the spread of dangerous weapons and maintain a
credible deterrent against an attack.
When she announced the reorganization, Rice declared that more than
deterrence and arms control treaties are necessary to safeguard America.
"We must also go on the offensive against outlaw scientists,
black-market arms dealers and rogue state proliferators," she said.
Bush has demanded maximum presidential flexibility on national security
matters, avoiding major new arms treaties and pushing the limits of
executive power on issues from domestic eavesdropping to the treatment
of terrorism suspects.
Many career government experts didn't dispute the need to reorganize
U.S. policy offices that deal with weapons of mass destruction. But they
said they worried that future administrations with a view different from
Bush and Rice's would have to build the expertise they'd need from
scratch.
An inquiry by Knight Ridder has found evidence that the reorganization
was highly politicized and devastated morale:
-Thomas Lehrman, a political appointee who heads the new office of
Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism, advertised outside the State
Department to fill jobs in his office. In an e-mail to universities and
research centers, a copy of which was obtained by Knight Ridder, he
listed loyalty to Bush and Rice's priorities as a qualification.
Lehrman reportedly recalled the e-mail after it was pointed out that
such loyalty tests are improper.
-Specialists in the department's old Nonproliferation Bureau, which
frequently battled Bolton on policy toward Iraq, Iran and North Korea,
largely were frozen out of important jobs when offices in that bureau
merged with those in another.
"Bolton had blood in his eyes for the Nonproliferation Bureau," said
another official who's still working at the State Department.
One of the government's top experts on the U.N. International Atomic
Energy Agency, which helps stem the spread of nuclear weapons but
disputed the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons programs,
returned from two and a half years at IAEA headquarters in Vienna,
Austria, and was blocked from assuming an office directorship that had
been offered to him, the officials and a complaint document said.
The post, which oversees U.S. diplomacy regarding international efforts
to contain suspected nuclear-weapons programs such as those in Iran and
North Korea, went to a more junior officer who numerous officials said
shared Bolton's views.
Five higher-ranking officers were passed over, the document says, adding
that none had negative work histories "aside from intimations that they
were not as `trusted' politically by the political management level."
In August 2005, the officer chosen for the job sent an e-mail
sarcastically titled: "A Nobel for the IAEA? Please." The agency and its
director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
in October.
-None of the most senior posts in the new organization was filled by a
woman, although several highly qualified female candidates were
available.
-The effort was at odds with the recommendations of four December 2004
reports by the department's inspector general, also obtained by Knight
Ridder.
The reports praised the nonproliferation unit as "having remained center
stage following the events of September 11, 2001." The unit it merged
with, the Arms Control bureau, was described as "largely in search of
work."
A third unit overseen by Bolton - and now Joseph - which deals with
overseeing compliance with arms treaties, was recommended for
downsizing. Instead, it's been expanded.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a veteran nonproliferation expert who recently left
the State Department, said he was worried about what he called an
"exodus" of qualified specialists from the department.
"It seems about a dozen or so have left since the merger came about,
many out of frustration," said Fitzpatrick, who's now at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "I'm concerned
that the ability of the merged bureaus to provide to Condoleezza Rice
the same kind of high-quality advice they provided Colin Powell on the
very dire proliferation issues facing the world will be diminished by
the exodus."
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents foreign
service officers, wrote to Rice on Nov. 28, citing allegations that
political considerations drove the reorganization.
Dissidents had a second meeting last month with Fore, the undersecretary
of state for management.
---
Key arms-control issues since President Bush took office:
The Bush administration's arms control policies began with a refusal to
submit a global treaty to ban underground nuclear-test blasts
indefinitely for Senate ratification.
The administration withdrew the United States from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and blocked international efforts to
conclude a pact on verifying compliance with a global biological-weapons
ban.
The administration also rejected a mechanism for verifying that the
United States and Russia are adhering to a 2002 accord to cut deployed
nuclear warheads, has embraced new uses for nuclear arms and is spending
billions modernizing and improving the U.S. arsenal.
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
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