From NRO’s The Corner:
A friend on the Hill writes:
Today marked a new low for the way congressional Democrats deal with national security. This morning, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a joint hearing on a “National Intelligence Assessment” on global climate change. This analysis was ordered by the Democratic Congress last year and was issued a few weeks ago. Some highlights (or low-lights) from the hearing:
1) In response to a question by Global Warming Committee member Greg Walden (R-OR), the Intelligence Community admitted they had “low to medium confidence” in the accuracy of this estimate because intelligence officers lack the expertise to write such an estimate (it was mostly contracted out to other organizations) and climate change science is so uncertain. As Walden started to ask about why an analysis of such low reliability was issued, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), the Global Warming Committee Chairman, cut him off and told him he was out of time even though Markey let all the previous Democrats speak substantially past their time limits.
2) Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Peter asked what intelligence was used for this estimate and whether intelligence collection requirements were prepared. National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar said no clandestine intelligence was used and that intelligence officers extrapolated what would happen if the “mid-level estimates” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were correct. When Hoekstra asked why the U.S. Intelligence Community would write an major analysis of low to medium confidence that contained no intelligence, Fingar answered, “because you [Congress] told us to.”
3) Hoekstra noted that intelligence assessments of high confidence have proven to be wrong and he wondered why an intelligence assessment of low to medium confidence would even be published. In an attempt to dispel the debate over confidence, Intelligence Committee member Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) responded by noting that the 2002 Iraq WMD NIE had high confidence in its findings. Some Republicans thought Rep. Eshoo’s statement actually made their case about the futility of issuing an intelligence assessment that intelligence officers cannot fully back.
If Obama gets in, we can expect mountains of nonsense like this – a whole slew of laws, hearings, regulations and campaigns which sound like they’re about something, but are really about liberals burnishing their own self-image. One of the many problems with liberals is that their ranks are heavily laced with bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, activists, community organizers…people who, in short, don’t actually do anything in the sense of actually producing an end product usable by Joe Average. Of course there is an intelligence estimate on global warming…because it is the biggest threat we face, and we’re going to really go after it, including the CIA! And liberals who thought this up will pat themselves on the back and thing they’ve done something – just as they do after they recycle, or vote for a guy who will increase government spending.
The irrationality here is astounding, but not actually surprising – given that the Democrats (who absurdly call themselves “the reality based community” on the strength of their rejection of Christian teaching on abortion and sexuality) have cut themselves off from the source of reason and are adrift on a sea of inconsequential, mental cobweb spinning. The more one thinks about it, the more silly the whole concept of allowing a Democrat to run the show becomes – they just don’t have what it takes to run a government…heck, they don’t have what it takes to run a boy scout troop (that does take some personal responsibility, ya know?).
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