Department of You've Got To Be F---ing Kidding Me

When Nick sent me this article from Time by Vivienne Walt about how the Pentagon has asked employees not to download the Taguba report from the Internet because its ostensibly still classified, I thought that it was pretty amazingly stupid, but perhaps an artifact of the monolithic nature of the Executive branch's bureaucracy. But according to Al Kamen in today's Washington Post, apparently the Legislative branch has the same problem. The Director of the Office of Senate Security sent out an email saying,

"Please advise your staff not to download and/or print the report from the Internet. They should review official copies that you obtain through normal channels. Staff should inform Members that, despite its public appearance, the report remains classified."

In other words, precisely those people who need to be reading this report cannot read it smoothly and efficiently, whereas the rest of us can download it at will.

If we insist on fighting a lot of wars and taking on a lot of other massive world-changing projects, and if we want to control the hemorrhaging of our national credibility, it would help if we didn't act like idiots.