Michael Ledeen has a very good,if angry, article in National Review, "Who got fired for sending Paul Wolfowitz to sleep in a deathtrap?" That is a question I always ask when the government makes a stupid mistake (I hope in this case that no American actually intended for Wolfowitz to die in an attack).
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...the fact that virtually no one has -- except for Larry Lindsay (seemingly for insufficient aerobic exercise) and a couple of others dealing with "the economy" or with faith-based initiatives and volunteerism -- is the greatest failure of this administration. The bureaucracy has learned that there is no penalty for failure.
Let's start with a simple, albeit apparently unasked question: Who got fired for permitting Wolfowitz to stay at a hotel in Baghdad, when there was abundant evidence that Iranian-sponsored terrorists had been instructed to target the hotels? When a relative of mine recently asked for advice before making a trip to Baghdad, I had just one strong recommendation: "Never, ever, set foot in a hotel in Baghdad."
Quite right. A separate point of the article is that the State Department is acting against America's interests, because what it values instead is good relations with foreign countries. The claim is plausible and very, very serious:
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This question should be asked again and again, by the two chief overseers, Congressman Porter Goss and Senator Pat Roberts: Why did the secretary of state and the director of central intelligence deliberately deprive the U.S. government of information that saved Americans from Iranian-sponsored terrorism?
The two appeasers who run the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- Sens. Richard Lugar and Joe Biden -- might have contributed to public enlightenment, and even good policy, if they had asked Armitage why he had failed to obtain Iranian cooperation in the matter of the al Qaeda terrorists. The correct answer is that Iran will never betray al Qaeda leaders, because Iran supports al Qaeda. The mullahs would no more give us Osama's henchmen than they would cut off an arm or a leg. Al Qaeda is part of their enterprise, which is to kill Americans and American friends wherever they can, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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