Here's what it'll take for me to consider a Democrat in 2008: Real intelligence reform.

Hugh Hewitt's been pushing "Legacy of Ashes" as of late on his radio show, and while that's a good thing, one book doth not a movement make.

Real intelligence reform goes beyond catchphrases like "no warrantless wiretaps!" and "if you're not for us, you're against us!" It goes beyond appointing an Intelligence Czar and calling the job over, it means going throught the civilian intelligence agencies like Jack Welch with a Sawzall. The CIA, NSA, FBI, et al are so messed up, it's scary. And those who point to the CIA as the be-all and end-all on pre-Iraq war intelligence need to wake up and stop blaming Bush for everything. When did the agency responsible for The Bay Of Pigs, overestimating the strength of the Soviets and telling Clinton to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade suddenly turn into the omnipotent "Agency" of Three Days Of The Condor?

The CIA was founded as a means to counter the Soviets by the people who fought WWII. Is there any successful business doing things the same way now that they did 60 years ago?

I said "successful", General Motors. Sit back down, please.

Let's say Al Qaeda wakes up to our leaking southern border and sneaks across a couple of bad guys along with a load of dope and firearms courtesy of La Neuve M (The New Mexican Mafia). The CIA, FBI, ICE, BATF, DEA, NSA, local law enforcement and who knows else (The military? Drugs = no posse comitatus, why not?) would all demand a piece of the action, leading to a bunch of paperwork and no real results. If it happened in Britain, MI-5, MI-6, and the Special Branch would be all the agencies involved, along with the SAS for extra firepower if needed. They invented modern espionage, why not follow their model? One agency for outside in, one agency for inside out, one agency to do the cop work for both, all of them talking to each other, and that's it.

Once that's cleared up, we need to take a long, hard look at USAID, the State Department and whoever is responsible for "nation building", including the hobgoblins of Blackwater and Haliburton. Like it or not, we're building nations, and have been for a loooooong time, at least since The Marshall Plan. It's time we got good at it. Michael Totten has a great piece up from post-surge Iraq, " The Peace Corps, with Muscles" that shows the problems of waging peace with an system built for war, exposing the need for what Thomas P.M. Barnett calls "The Department Of Everything Else." That may mean expanding the role of Haliburton, et al, into the modern-day equivalent of The British East India Company, it may not. But it means using every tool we have available to get the job done.

Now what's interesting about both of these things is that's a great way for a center-left Democrat to outplay the GOP on national security and yet still remain true to the base. "You want out of Iraq?", says our candidate, "Well, we need it stable first, and the military is darn good at blowing things up and killing people and we love 'em for it, but it doesn't make for productive nations. We need more than just a 'law enforcement-based' plan, we need a seamless, integrated, bottom-up system to make rogue nations play nice with each other. Sometimes, that means bombing, sometimes, that means building. We need to be the best in the world at both."

BAM, there goes any GOP advantage in national security, and yet it still seems that they're committed to pulling the troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.

And then if intelligence reform is couched in terms of bi-partisan, results-based re-structuring like what business has gone through in the past 15 years, led by a blue-ribbon panel of people from everywhere BUT the CIA, there goes any GOP advantage in the war on terror.

You're welcome, Dems. Now, go out and do it, and make Scoop Jackson proud.