Pentagon will Take Over CIA

The The Sun:

The pending appointment of General Michael Hayden as director of the Central Intelligence Agency will pave the way for the agency's emasculation and for the Pentagon to assume full authority over paramilitary operations.

A senior intelligence community official yesterday said the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has indicated "he is willing to give up covert operations to the Pentagon."

The source also pointed out that the Pentagon has requested increased budget authority to prepare for the acquisition of the CIA's targeted military operations. The intelligence overhaul of 2004 envisioned that they would remain under the purview of the CIA.

The authority to commission and plan these secret military operations has been a point of contention since 2004 when Congress and the White House began reorganizing the intelligence community.

Pretty scary by itself, but the next paragraph is the one that's really chilling.

The proposed change would give the Pentagon unfettered authority to plan and conduct these operations without consulting an intelligence bureaucracy its civilian leaders have deemed hostile to the president's war policy.

That's right. Because BushCo didn't like what professional spies and intelligence officers thought about his foreign policy, he cut them out of the loop. President Bush, Commander in Chief, will now direct all intelligence work through the Pentagon - much easier to control, apparently.

Is it ok to start using fascist* yet?

George W. Bush Republicans CIA Fascism

*Fascism: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." - American Heritage Dictionary