james_nicoll

Weren't there at least two other major international antiterrorism investigations blown because high-ranking Bush administration officials blew their cover in speeches?

Found one!
Back in 2004: "U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources said on Friday."

Likewise, the Brits arrested the liquid bomb plotters ahead of their schedule (before police could gather sufficient evidence to guarantee conviction) due to pressure from Americans.

I'll buy incompetence on the subject of security.

Ditto. They're incompetent at everything else; why should security be any different?

Channeling Mark Atwood: if that's how soldiers, or even civilians, react to whistleblowing, then what else might be going on unreported by people whose three weeks of agonizing about whether to report torture results in a decision of "no"?

My fanciful theory, after a Sunday-afternoon nap and before coffee, is that Rumsfeld did it to deter more whistleblowing.

I am simply shocked that you would suspect a member of BushCo of vindictiveness in the service of cruelty.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

At this point, the question is whether Bush&Co. are criminally incompetent, or incompetently criminal.

-- Wakboth

[C] All of the above.

The case has been made, by commentators more competent than I.

Crimipetent?

Given the proven (to them) track record of playing dumb when all of their deliberate crap becomes public, I imagine it's easy to stop worrying entirely about the accidental crap.

It's always hard to resist incompetence as an explanation of the Bush gang, but in both cases here they gave away the identities of people who were revealing things they were trying to cover up, so this time I'll go with malice (which the Bush gang also has a lot of).

Maybe so.

The soldiers in his unit read as if they truly had their heads on straight, very unlike some of his fellow citizens back in his home town.

It's not the folk back home who are at risk of getting blown up by IEDs when a mistreated Iraqi feels like payback...

It is utterly shameful how that man has been treated. I'm glad most of his fellow soldiers weren't angry, though.

Never aspire to malice what can be explained by gross incompetence....

AND malice! {snerk}

Aww, as an Evil Genius in training I always try to aspire to malice!
I think you mean "ascribe" :)

Seems to be my day for the malapropriate word - I DID mean "ascribe", and elsewhere I kept referring to Six Apart as Six Alive. Oh well..