WP:State Dept. Losing a Top Figure In Terror War

Henry A. "Hank" Crumpton, the chief of the State Department's counterterrorism office and a key strategist in the war in Afghanistan, will announce today that he is leaving government in the new year, a senior State Department official said yesterday.

Crumpton was a career covert CIA officer with a secret identity who stepped out of the shadows in August 2005 to take the State Department job. He gained almost mythical fame after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he headed the CIA's campaign in Afghanistan, crafting a strategy that partnered elite intelligence and military officers in teams that worked with Afghan opposition to oust the Taliban.

The novel and initially controversial approach worked to limit cost in human life and materiel -- and to avoid the kind of protracted U.S. ground war that the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan and that the United States is facing in Iraq.

Crumpton is the mysterious "Henry" in the Sept. 11 commission report, which notes that he repeatedly urged U.S. intelligence to do more in Afghanistan before the al-Qaeda attacks.

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801228.html

Since George AWOL Bush and the repulicons arrived on the scene.

We are now supposed to believe Crumpton was a hero in all of this?

Excuse me while I Blow Chunks...

The important part of the article is that the State Dept has some serious holes:

His departure leaves another big hole at the State Department, which has been struggling to find a deputy secretary of state for six months. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also now looking for replacements for her departing counselor and undersecretary of state for economic affairs.

no one wants to work with Condi? :sarcasm:

And the diplomats are supposed to be in the State Department? This horrible administration has fucked up so many things, and we shouldn't overlook the blurring of the mission between State and Defense that Bush and Cheney have worked so hard to achieve. This is one "legacy" that will take years to untangle. The State Department isn't supposed to promulgate military strategy; Crumpton's departure is long overdue, even if his initial plan was wildly or evenly mildly successful. It certainly wasn't lastingly successful in this administration, which seems to treat government success as something to be avoided at all costs.

Way to go, Hank.