Maine Owl

Sort of

Basically, again, what Gerald said. Seems this "forum" just was an opportunity for Senator Susan Collins to "tout" herself.

Sen. Collins touts bipartisan record
By Bill Trotter - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR, Maine - When time came Monday morning to talk about the specifics of America’s policies overseas, Sen. Susan Collins started off on an issue she has mentioned before and is likely to mention again in the months leading up to the Senate election this fall: bipartisanship.

The Republican incumbent cited her work in 2004 on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat who became an independent in 2006, as an example of how bipartisanship can get things done. She and Lieberman, the committee's ranking minority member, had set about to implement reform recommended by the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission.

"This [resulting] legislation brought about the most sweeping changes in our intelligence community in more than 50 years," Collins told approximately 65 people who gathered Monday morning at Bangor Public Library for the Bangor Foreign Policy Forum. "I strongly believe we need more of that approach in Washington."

Let's stop right there. The reality is that the so-called intelligence "reform" she "touts" is a rump bureaucracy permanently subordinate to Pentagon prerogatives. Collins may posture as creator of some great new post-9/11 security apparatus, but the truth is she was kept on a short leash by Rumsfeld and more powerful Congressional Pentagon operatives, like former House Armed Services Committee Chair Duncan Hunter. As some may recall, Collins's original work could not pass in December 2004 until the Pentagon was satisfied its turf was protected.

Later, the original Director of National Intelligence (DNI, the key position established by the legislation), Jon Negroponte, left the job for an ostensible downgrade to Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice with "disappointment" expressed by Collins. The structure established by the Collins-Lieberman legislation left the DNI hampered by having "little control" over its own budget.

It's not hard to see that the 2004 legislation was little more than an annoyance for the Bush Administration, and they figured out how to fold it in, now under the hand of retired Admiral and national-security-contractor-friendly J. Michael McConnell, late of the "international consulting" firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. For example, Bush has crippled the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board included in the law, again to the "disappointment" of Senators Collins and Lieberman. Is there a pattern here?

With a little work, it should be easy to demonstrate to Maine voters that Senator Susan Collins has not been able to use her power effectively. She has been a very subservient figure within the operations the Bush government conducts.