The Pillar

If you haven't seen the name Paul Pillar popping up around the blogoshpere over the past few hours you will notice it soon enough. I noticed the name at American Thinker which pointed to Dinocrat and Malkin (as well as an earlier piece by their own Clarice Feldman) which pointed to Stop the NY Times and Powerline which pointed to older notices of the man at The Weekly Standard and Thomas Joscelyn.

You'll find links to WaPo and NYTimes articles as well as Mr. Pillar's book first published in 1999 and re-released in 2004. I expect Paul Pillar will be getting some attention over the next day or two so I went and googled him all for my little self. He get's around. A one man, inexhaustable advocate team for the Kerryesque (or perhaps the Pillar of the Kerryesque) idea of using the the domestic and international criminal justice system for "fighting" terrorism.

He's a Visiting Professor at the Georgetown Center for Peace and Security Studies, according to ZNET he "managed the writing of all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005" and apparently charges that the Fear of U.S. Drove Iran's Nuclear Policy. He authored an article in Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq, defending the Intelligence Community as the victims of the Bush administration's subltle pressures. You can find his recent book described at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College and reviews, at Foreign Affairs, of his books Terrorism and US Foreign Policy and Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process. He's no fan of using military forces for counterterrorism operations although he does acknowledge the effectiveness of doing so in Afghanistan which, he claims, was rather a unique situation.

The most interesting bit I found from the simple googling was the Statement of Paul R. Pillar to the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 8 October 2002. It is a minor masterpiece. Read it (and weep) for yourself. Dr. Pillar spends eight pages telling the SSCI about the various difficulties when it comes to collecting and analysing intelligence, the various failures over the years, the various bureaucratic changes and even breakthroughs, his "belief" that those have saved lives and matter a great deal despite the painful failures, the importance of acting against terrorists rather than getting too hung up on terrorists tactics and foiling operations and how we should all be very careful about making additional changes or putting too much blame on the intelligence community.

No doubt he's a very smart man. The seditionist Presse Ancienne just loves him like a cuddly ol' teddy bear they've been snuggling with for years and years.