The USA Today headline says it all: "Terror expertise not a priority at the FBI."
We shouldn't be surprised, should we? Is this not the same FBI which denied the existence of the Mafia? Which laid siege to, and ultimately incinerated, dozens of Texans because of a botched ATF raid? Which can't even buy or upgrade a fucking computer system for itself?
WASHINGTON (AP) — In sworn testimony that contrasts with their promises to the public, the FBI managers who crafted the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorism say expertise about the Mideast or terrorism was not important in choosing the agents they promoted to top jobs.And they still do not believe such experience is necessary today even as terrorist acts occur across the globe.
"A bombing case is a bombing case," said Dale Watson, the FBI's terrorism chief in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001. "A crime scene in a bank robbery case is the same as a crime scene, you know, across the board."
Ahem, that's fine and dandy unless one of the animating ideas is to prevent the creation of such crimes in the first place. And let's just forget the "promises to the public" nonsense: such "promises" mean nothing, and never have. But these guys are also lying to Congress, which pays the bills, including their own salaries:
The hundreds of pages of testimony obtained by The Associated Press contrast with assurances Mueller repeatedly has given Congress that he was building a new FBI, from top to bottom, with experts able to stop terrorist attacks before they occurred, not solve them afterward."The FBI's shift toward terrorism prevention necessitates the building of a national level expertise and body of knowledge," Mueller told Congress a year after the suicide hijackings, as lawmakers approved billions of new dollars to fight terrorism.
Ahhh, now isn't that nice: "terrorism prevention." But I thought that "a crime scene in a bank robbery case is the same as a crime scene, you know, across the board." Silly me.
Again, your tax dollars at work. This country has enemies, including our own home-grown, reflexively "blame-America-first" nutty leftwing nutjobs. We don't need to be paying high-ranking, empire-building bureaucrats to help those enemies accomplish their tasks. I don't know, at this point, whether we're winning the war on Islamic terrorism or not -- but I do know that not all of our "leaders" and "public servants" are even fighting the right war.