What does it mean when senior advisors quit and go public?

Yesterday's news, as in the Christian Science Monitor, reported:

Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote that the Bush administration did not use intelligence to inform their decision about going to war in Iraq, but instead "cherry-picked" data that justified a decision that it had already reached.

In January and in October I posted on Larry Wilkerson's comments on decision making in the White House. Wilkerson was Chief of Staff in the Department of State, and he severly criticized the Bush Administration's approach to making decisions with regard to the Iraq war.

Richard A. Clark, according to Sourcewatch, "was the counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council when the September 11 attacks occurred. He resigned in January 2003 as 'anti-terrorism czar.' after serving in the White House under three presidents (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush). In 2004, he published a book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror--What Really Happened, which was highly critical of the Bush administration's handling of counterterrorism both before and after September 11."

According to same Sourcewatch entry, "Rand Beers, the official who succeeded Clarke after he left the White House, resigned in protest just one month later--five days before the Iraqi war started--for precisely the same reason that Clarke quit." Beers joined the Kerry campaign staff. Beers is quoted in the Washington Post in 2003 speaking out on the Bush Administration:

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."

Michael Scheuer, the head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit left his job and wrote Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror which was stongly critical of Bush Administration decision making about the war in Iraq.

A Comment:

I was just thinking how very unusual it has for senior civil servants in our government to resign in protest and go public with their concerns about the Administration. That so many have done so in response to the Bush Administration's decision making about Iraq is exceptional. I am not sure that the media and the public understand the weight of this criticism.

Senior civil servants of this rank are, in my opinion, much more knowledgable that the political officers to whom they report. They rise to such positions after decades of effort, and in competition with the cream of the civil service. As a group, they adhere strongly to an ethic of presenting as complete and unbiased an analysis as they can, and leaving the decision making to the elected officials. As a group, recognizing that going public with disagreement with those decisions will tend to weaken the influence of the analytic professionals on the politicians, they only quit and go public rarely and under extreme circumstances.

One resignation in protest of such a person could be a fluke. A series of such resignations is grounds for serious concern!