Intelligence and reason

The Providence Journal: With just a short time before adjournment, Congress has been hastily considering the sweeping restructure of the intelligence community recommended by the 9/11 Commission. It's the haste involved that prompted former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to go before the Senate Appropriations Committee last week and plead for debate and deliberation.
Citing a statement he'd recently issued, signed by dozens of other former government and political leaders, Kissinger made the point that "reforms of the magnitude being talked about ... should not be rushed through in the last week of a congressional session, in the middle of a presidential campaign."
We could not agree more. The 9/11 Commission reforms have much to recommend them, but they were not handed down from Mount Sinai. Some of the proposals are less inspired than others and, as Kissinger says, should not be enacted with undue speed in a superheated political atmosphere. Congress was designed to consider such proposals after thorough public debate -- not just to affix on them a rubber stamp.
Differing views
The politics of the presidential campaign are, as Kissinger suggests, involved. Sen. John Kerry endorsed every one of the commission's proposals almost before the ink was dry. At the risk of being accused of inaction, President Bush offered a more sensible reaction, suggesting that the proposals be "thoroughly studied."
The war on terrorism demands swift response, but not an instant embrace of ideas with massive consequences. The ideas must be carefully weighed in the national forum. In particular, the bureaucratic consolidation of the intelligence community under the purview of a single "czar" has all the earmarks of a quick, convenient political fix, with little relation to the quality of intelligence gathering.