gekko
08-01-2003, 07:46 PM
Hollywood Hits
June 18, 2003
By John Weisman
Congress is impatient. Some of our more edgy solons are calling for witch-hunts because CIA has not yet been able to put its hands on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the chief US civil administrator in Iraq has made only spasmodic progress toward finalizing a form of democracy for Iraq that would do Athens proud. Our lawmakers are buttressed in this politically-charged impatience by the news media, which keeps asking questions at White House and Pentagon briefings that go something like, "The war's been over for three weeks already, so why isn't everything in Iraq perfect yet?"
Now, I could jump all over Congress, which -- for the most part -- has the attention span of a gnat. Or, I could beat up on the media. It's always fun to beat up on the media.
Instead, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm going to tell you who's really at fault in promoting all these impossibly high expectations about progress in Iraq.
It's Hollywood. That's right, Hollywood.
See, in Hollywood, problems are always solved in exactly 44 minutes. That's the amount of time you get for an hour-long prime time TV show, minus the commercials. That's why, during last winter's Washington sniper episode, all those twentysomething reporters whose intellectual and socio-political inculcation probably came at the hands of producers like Dick Wolf or Aaron Sorkin kept asking law enforcement spokespeople serious questions like, "Why aren't the murders and shootings being solved faster?"
After all, it takes Law and Order's gumshoes only 44 minutes to close every one of their incredibly tough cases. Why was it taking real cops so much longer to make progress?
And Martin Sheen. He solves the whole world's problems in 44 minutes on The West Wing. It's logical to ask why President Bush can't do the same thing.
Well, doh. In real life, problems don't get solved in 44 minutes. Rebuilding Europe after WW-II was still going on when I first visited Britain, France, and Italy and Germany in 1960-fifteen years after VE Day. The prime time drama known as the Cold War took more than 50 years to reach its denouement.
Then there's been all that grousing lately about the fact that CIA didn't have many agents in Iraq back before the war started. If we had sufficient agents, the story goes, we'd know all about WMD. Now, the current Langley spin, being leaked to a few trusted Washington reporters, is that even as you are reading this, CIA is out there, graduating a new class of case officers who will go to Iraq and recruit a whole new cadre of Iraqi agents.
First of all, it's a case of trying to save the chickens after the fox has left. We'd be better off recruiting North Koreans these days. Or Iranians. Or Saudis, or Palestinians, or even Yemenis. Not to mention the fact that it takes years for a case officer to develop the sorts of subtle people skills that enable him/her to spot, assess, develop and then recruit a productive agent, or build a fruitful agent network.
What the spinners at CIA won't admit is that in Iraq, things might have been different. It might have been different. In the spring of 1991, right after Gulf War 1, a cadre of the Agency's most experienced Arabic speaking case officers volunteered to go to Saudi Arabia to recruit agents from among the thousands of Iraqi captains, major colonels and generals who were prisoners of war. Maybe even reel in a few Tikkriti officers who were from Saddam's clan, and might get close to him.
But those were the days when Judge William Webster was DCI. Webster kept such a low profile he was known at Langley as "The Stealth DCI." Recruiting Muslims in Saudi Arabia might offend our friends the Saudis. And offending Saudis was not something that was done in Judge Webster's CIA.
Needless to say, Baer and his fellow Arabist case officers were turned down. Which is why we had virtually no Iraqi agents during the 1990s. And hence no one close enough to Saddam to be able to tell us where he stashed all the WMD now that we have sent him packing. And Congress is still impatient because it's almost July and Iraq hadn't turned into a democratic Utopia yet.
The only logical answer, it seems to me is for Congress to send the CIA and Paul Bremer packing and turn the Iraqi problem over to Hollywood hitmeister Jerry Bruckheimer. He's the guy who produces CSI. His people will find those WMDs and bring democracy to Iraq in exactly an hour -- minus commercials -- guaranteed.
They always do.
This guy is slowly but surely becoming my favorite writer.
June 18, 2003
By John Weisman
Congress is impatient. Some of our more edgy solons are calling for witch-hunts because CIA has not yet been able to put its hands on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the chief US civil administrator in Iraq has made only spasmodic progress toward finalizing a form of democracy for Iraq that would do Athens proud. Our lawmakers are buttressed in this politically-charged impatience by the news media, which keeps asking questions at White House and Pentagon briefings that go something like, "The war's been over for three weeks already, so why isn't everything in Iraq perfect yet?"
Now, I could jump all over Congress, which -- for the most part -- has the attention span of a gnat. Or, I could beat up on the media. It's always fun to beat up on the media.
Instead, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm going to tell you who's really at fault in promoting all these impossibly high expectations about progress in Iraq.
It's Hollywood. That's right, Hollywood.
See, in Hollywood, problems are always solved in exactly 44 minutes. That's the amount of time you get for an hour-long prime time TV show, minus the commercials. That's why, during last winter's Washington sniper episode, all those twentysomething reporters whose intellectual and socio-political inculcation probably came at the hands of producers like Dick Wolf or Aaron Sorkin kept asking law enforcement spokespeople serious questions like, "Why aren't the murders and shootings being solved faster?"
After all, it takes Law and Order's gumshoes only 44 minutes to close every one of their incredibly tough cases. Why was it taking real cops so much longer to make progress?
And Martin Sheen. He solves the whole world's problems in 44 minutes on The West Wing. It's logical to ask why President Bush can't do the same thing.
Well, doh. In real life, problems don't get solved in 44 minutes. Rebuilding Europe after WW-II was still going on when I first visited Britain, France, and Italy and Germany in 1960-fifteen years after VE Day. The prime time drama known as the Cold War took more than 50 years to reach its denouement.
Then there's been all that grousing lately about the fact that CIA didn't have many agents in Iraq back before the war started. If we had sufficient agents, the story goes, we'd know all about WMD. Now, the current Langley spin, being leaked to a few trusted Washington reporters, is that even as you are reading this, CIA is out there, graduating a new class of case officers who will go to Iraq and recruit a whole new cadre of Iraqi agents.
First of all, it's a case of trying to save the chickens after the fox has left. We'd be better off recruiting North Koreans these days. Or Iranians. Or Saudis, or Palestinians, or even Yemenis. Not to mention the fact that it takes years for a case officer to develop the sorts of subtle people skills that enable him/her to spot, assess, develop and then recruit a productive agent, or build a fruitful agent network.
What the spinners at CIA won't admit is that in Iraq, things might have been different. It might have been different. In the spring of 1991, right after Gulf War 1, a cadre of the Agency's most experienced Arabic speaking case officers volunteered to go to Saudi Arabia to recruit agents from among the thousands of Iraqi captains, major colonels and generals who were prisoners of war. Maybe even reel in a few Tikkriti officers who were from Saddam's clan, and might get close to him.
But those were the days when Judge William Webster was DCI. Webster kept such a low profile he was known at Langley as "The Stealth DCI." Recruiting Muslims in Saudi Arabia might offend our friends the Saudis. And offending Saudis was not something that was done in Judge Webster's CIA.
Needless to say, Baer and his fellow Arabist case officers were turned down. Which is why we had virtually no Iraqi agents during the 1990s. And hence no one close enough to Saddam to be able to tell us where he stashed all the WMD now that we have sent him packing. And Congress is still impatient because it's almost July and Iraq hadn't turned into a democratic Utopia yet.
The only logical answer, it seems to me is for Congress to send the CIA and Paul Bremer packing and turn the Iraqi problem over to Hollywood hitmeister Jerry Bruckheimer. He's the guy who produces CSI. His people will find those WMDs and bring democracy to Iraq in exactly an hour -- minus commercials -- guaranteed.
They always do.
This guy is slowly but surely becoming my favorite writer.