Let's Work Together To Make America Incredibly Stupid

Via Bob, here's an extremely encouraging story about the Bush administration and the CIA:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

Ah, purges. I'm trying to remember... how have purges generally worked out for the country in question? Really well, right?

Among those victimized by the Great Purge were large numbers of experienced Red Army officers and even high-ranking generals. This left the armed forces incompetent and leaderless, and left the country vulnerable to invasion, and may actually have encouraged Hitler and Nazi Germany to launch Operation Barbarossa after they learned of its weakness.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: from the largest superpowers to the smallest schoolboard, the only goal of leaders is to remain in power themselves. They do not care in any way about the well-being of the people they supposedly lead. If making us vulnerable to attack helps them retain their exciting plush executive offices, well, that's a small price to pay.

UPDATE: Chris W. in comments points to this NPR story on the same subject, as well as this post by Phil Carter at Intel-Dump. Carter draws the same promising parallel with Stalin's purges.