A recently released/leaked National Intelligence Report concludes that Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003.

 

Clearly, this is in direct contravention to what the Bush Administration has been telling us.

 

Remember the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf? The lesson of that story is that consistency is necessary in order that the community can react properly to threats. False alarms destroy consistency.

 

We are seeing a modern day telling of that tale.

 

Intelligence data, to be usable, must be restricted in terms of who is allowed access to that data. The more sensitive the data, the more restricted the access should be. Here's what that means to you as a citizen of this country.

 

Decisions about the actions needed to be taken for our national defense must be based on restricted intelligence data. Those with access to that data are our elected representatives. Those representatives have that access in order to make those decisions. For us to support the decisions of those representatives, we voters must be able to trust those representatives. If we cannot trust those representatives to tell us the truth, then our job as voters is to replace those representatives.

As Frank Rich's book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, details, the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence data in order to persuade the American public that war with Iraq was justified. As a result, the majority of the American public distrusts this President and his administration.

Ask any professional manager at any level of any organization what they would do with a leader they couldn't trust. My sense is they will overwhelmingly tell you that leader should be replaced. This is why (as I have described elsewhere in this blog) Bush and Cheney should be impeached.

We have an even larger problem in this country. What checks and balances, what safeguards, need to be instituted to enable us to trust our represenatives? How can we believe what they tell us with regard to intelligence data?

My answer is that we need to demand our representatives institute systems in this country that cause them to suffer the same risks as the common citizen in making the decisions they make. So long as our representatives are free of the consequences of their decisions on a personal level, we will be unable to trust their judgement.

It's not that hard. In the military, we called it leading by example. It's being willing to suffer the same hardships as those you lead. I heard it expressed once as, "You tote your own roll and you dig your own hole." That meant you didn't have someone else carry your heavy and cumbersome bed roll (sleeping bag). You carry your own. In the same way, digging your own hole that you go into to fight from is also a demonstration of your capacity to hold up your own end and be worthy of the people you lead.

Ask yourself this. What sacrifices have you been asked to make in the last 7 years to help win the war against terrorists and terrorism? What sacrifices have you seen your leaders make? The answers to those questions aren't good, are they?

Maybe some of the questions we need to be asking all these Presidential candidates is about what sacrifices they expect we citizens to make and what sacrifices they will make to earn our trust.