Spooks R' Us

Yeah, Atrios already posted this, so I'm sure all have seen it...Still, it's interesting to see the kind of parsing a supposedly plain talking administration uses:

The Pentagon acknowledged Sunday that it is trying to improve its network of spies abroad but denied a published report that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had reinterpreted U.S. law to create an espionage unit under his control...

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said it was "accurate and should not be surprising" that the Pentagon would try to improve its human spying capability...

As part of that effort, he said, the Defense Intelligence Agency "has been taking steps to be more focused and task-oriented for the global war on terror." DiRita said the Defense Department "remains in regular consultation" with congressional committees, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

DiRita denied that Rumsfeld controls a secret group of spies. "There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in The Washington Post," he said in a statement. "Further, the Department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article."

Here's the Post article (registration required). A snippet:

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

Operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places (like Somalia, Yemen, etc. etc.--and probably Pakistan and some of the former Central Asian Soviet Republics)...you know what? Whether or not their "reinterpretation" of law is in fact legal (not that they give a shit anyway)--they STILL SUCK at gathering anything useful...Zarqawi's still thumbing his nose at us (even as we crow about this or that "top aide" who's been captured), bombs explode at the rate of more than one a day, water was cut off in parts of Baghdad for six days--and, in what could be considered a war crime, was deliberately cut in Fallujah prior to the assault.

And, over the weekend, The Times brought Andrew Sullivan in to review a couple of books about torture--and added a third review to the mix. Nothing like books to make the public comfortable with atrocity...