Want to know where to find weapons of mass destruction? Last weekend, the New York Times buried an article on how authorities in Thailand had seized as much as sixty-six pounds of Cesium-137, a radioactive material which could be used to make "dirty" bombs.
Non-proliferation experts said they wouldn't be surprised if the Cesium came from the former Soviet Union--the source of much of the radioactive material seized on the black market in recent years. Just three days later, the New York Times' World Briefing section ran a tiny item noting that police in Tbilisi, Georgia had just discovered 170 pounds of Cesium-137, along with strontium 90 in a taxi.
It's no wonder former national security official and Special Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism Rand Beers, who resigned eight week ago, blasted the Administration's agenda as the reason for his departure: "They're making us less secure, not more secure."
Earlier Katrina had General Shinseki's farewell.
"You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader," he said. "You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance."
Read between the lines. The Army chief of staff is telling us that men like Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are arrogant commanders, who not only exaggerated the threat Iraq posed but gravely underestimated the problems of postwar occupation. Americans would do well to heed General Shinseki's final warning.
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