WORD COUNT 665                                                                                                                                                                            MAY 6, 2008

DON’T MESS WITH THE CIA – by Donald Kaul 

I’d like to address three issues in today’s sermon: Obama and the CIA, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and secession, and Minnesota and elections. In order: 

Obama ---The other day the president gave CIA torturers a free get-out-of-jail pass. 

Whatever happens with the investigations into the harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA officials, he said, the government will not prosecute the agents because they were acting on legal advice. It wasn’t their fault that the legal advice was illegal. It was time to “move forward,” he said. 

This set a lot of liberals’ hair on fire. Liberals want to pursue truth and justice and international law and don’t care how many elections it costs them. This explains why they win so few elections. (You should see their souls, however. Immaculate.) I’m with Obama on this. Presidents who wage war on the CIA tend not to have long and fruitful careers. 

There was Jack Kennedy for example. 

Angry with a CIA that had led him into the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, he vowed to clean house and he did, for a while. 

Right up to the time he was assassinated---by a lone assassin (with vague connections to shadowy CIA figures, oddly enough). The assassin, of course, was assassinated before he could be interrogated---by a patriotic gangster, who turned out to have cancer so he never talked either. And we just wrote the whole thing off to crazy bad luck. 

Then there was Jimmy Carter, who attempted to dismantle much of the CIA’s covert operations machinery. His presidency was torpedoed when Iranian “students” took our Iran embassy personnel hostage. 

After a CIA-led rescue attempt was badly botched, Ronald Reagan was elected president. (Another coincidence.) I’ll never forget that split-screen image of the hostages being released as Reagan was being sworn into office---simultaneously. Oddly enough, Mr. Reagan’s campaign manager was named head of the CIA, after which agents of the U.S. government secretly sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. 

And we wrote it off to crazy bad luck. Am I saying the CIA engineered all of this? Of course not. What am I, Oliver Stone? It was just bad luck. 

And presidents who annoy the CIA tend to get unlucky real quick. 

Rick Perry---At a recent “tea party” rally in Texas, the crowd erupted in cries of “Secede” during the governor’s anti-administration harangue. He seemed to disavow the thought but later hinted that if the U.S. of A. didn’t watch what it was doing, it might have to do it without Texas. Here’s my advice to the governor: Secede. It would be a divorce made in Heaven. I’ve favored getting rid of Texas for many years. Not only would it raise the average Intelligence Quotient of the nation, it would lower the Braggadocio Quotient. Win-win. In addition, it would spare us politicians like George W., Dick Armey, Phil Gramm and Tom DeLay. I’ve always thought you should have to show a passport to get into the place anyway. 

Minnesota---What is it about counting that Minnesotans don’t understand? They have been trying to get a final tally on the votes in their Senate election for the past six months without success. 

Every time they come up with a number, the Republican candidate (who is now about 0-for-4 on recounts) appeals to a higher court. And if he loses his present appeal, he has threatened to take the matter to federal court. The election threatens to go on and on like Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the interminable suit that forms the background of Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House.” It’s an inheritance suit, and it drags on for years and generations until legal fees eat up pretty much all the money. So, too, with this election. What kind of electoral system allows the loser to delay accepting defeat forever? A Minnesota system, obviously. They say that Minnesota politics are very clean. Fine, but that’s no excuse for incompetence. 

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Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his own account, is right more than he's wrong. Email: dkaul2@earthlink.net-- A photo of Donald Kaul is available CLICK HEREMinutemanMedia 

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