Thursday, November 25, 2004

Scoop

"Free men are engaged in a bitter contest with powerful and resourceful adversaries. The responsibility of America is to defend vital national interests, promote the economic well-being of the nation, and to use its power and influence with the good sense that marks a great nation. This is no easy task.

If our country is to stay the course until the world finds a way to assure peace with justice, then the Presidency, and the State and Defense Departments, as well as other national security agencies, must measure up to the highest standards of competence. And members of Congress, too.

Americans have a healthy distrust of the concentration of power. I say 'healthy' because it is so easy for a man to confuse his possession of power with the possession of wisdom. The tendency to this confusion is difficult to resist, as every parent knows. Wisely, the American people suspect claims to omniscience."

Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, The National Security Council, 1965

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