THE OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY PRESIDENT PAYS THE PRICE AND SO DOES THE COUNTRY

One good (bad?) thing as a result of the FEMA leadership is that Conservatives are lining up like a firing squad on W's horrible choices for various agencies. Debbie Schussel, the right wing bomb thrower, is the latest to open fire and boy does she do a number. She not only buries the completely unqualified new head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Julie Myers, who has been appointed to head the most important law enforcement agency in the War on Terror, she goes after everyone. And she is correct.

Agents wondered what this 36-year-old's credentials were--besides being General Myers' niece and the (shack job) bed partner of Chertoff's Chief of Staff (to whom she was then engaged and is now married). The clueless Myers needed days and days of tutoring from ICE executive management for her nomination hearings.

She then moves on to Garcia the former head of ICE.

Instead of investigating radical Islamic groups' money-laundering to Muslim terrorists, ICE Special Agents in Charge, like Brian Moskowitz (who oversees the heart of Islamic America--Michigan and Ohio), are hanging out at Hezbollah mosques (future column), pandering to "former" Islamic terrorists, and enlisting them in Arabic-speaking agent recruitment efforts. With Garcia's tacit approval, Moskowitz shut down many investigations into Islamic terrorist money-laundering and illegal Islamic immigration, hanging out with individuals tied to these operations instead.

Be sure you read the piece, it's terrific.

I have blogged since I started about the horrible Bush appointments and his "stand by your man" code of governance. The list of Clinton holdovers he should have fired include the inept "Chloroform(ed)"Norm at Transportation; the clod Tenant at CIA; and Louis Freeh, the Inspector Clouseau FBI director under Clinton and held over after the election of "reformer" Bush; Freeh was as responsible as anyone for 9/11, a guy who never should have had the job in the first place. There are more Clouseaus too numerous to mention. Worse, if possible, are W's appointments: the totally "in the tank with the accounting crooks' head of the SEC, Harvey Pitts; CFTC Chairman Walter Lukken, a guy with no experience in the corrupt commodities exchanges. Then we have the near insurrectionist horde of Clinton holdovers at DoD that could have been and should have been fired if not arrested for forgery; Richard Clarke who actively worked to sabotage the entire administration, and on and on and on.

Meanwhile, people siding with Bush and exposing what was going on, people like FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, who detailed the incompetence and national security risks of a Bush appointee, simply disappear.

Why the semi-competent appointments? I think this is the price we pay when we elect a Washington "Outsider," a guy who knows nobody, a guy who has to rely on his assistants to guide him to the "right" people. Picking that political crony, the sitting governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge, meant that we got Joe Smiley in charge of a very serious agency. Qualified? Yes, he was a proven good administrator but his manner was totally wrong, smiling through a terror threat is not what was needed.

Bush knows nobody, knew nobody, and picked agency heads out of a hat. Be wary of "outsiders." Knowing nobody can be a terrible handicap, as a lot of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama found out.

Footnote: Didn't he have an ultimate insider in Dick Cheney? And what about his old man, the former prez? Yes on both counts, but.....Cheney had been out of the loop for more than 8 years as had his father. Using Cheney and his Dad, and also James Baker was using old news. They knew dead guys, old guys; nobody knew the young guns. Then there is the fact that the president himself was not bringing forth the candidates. Cheney and Bush I bring forth either the guys each would have if they were president, or who they think is best for Bush II. We need people as president who know the bureaucracy, know who is available to run things and run them right. Wasn't done. Isn't being done as the appointment of that former shack job for Meyer's son as ICE head.