Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

At some point, one hopes the obvious message that America gets truly lousy service from its goverment will start sinking in. WaPo is simultaneously carrying not one, but TWO examples. One is international, the other is domestic. Both are pathetic - and like FEMA, they are part and parcel of our entire Homeland "Security".

This is the CIA:

MILAN -- In March 2003, the Italian national anti-terrorism police received an urgent message from the CIA about a radical Islamic cleric who had mysteriously vanished from Milan a few weeks before. The CIA reported that it had reliable information that the cleric, the target of an Italian criminal investigation, had fled to an unknown location in the Balkans.

In fact, according to Italian court documents and interviews with investigators, the CIA's tip was a deliberate lie, part of a ruse designed to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian refugee known as Abu Omar.

Here's the FBI in action:

FBI agents botched a terrorism investigation in Florida and tried to cover up mistakes, said Justice Department investigators, who also concluded that a high-ranking official retaliated against the longtime undercover agent who pointed out the problems.

It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know that my tax dollars are floating this mess, not to mention that these are the agencies upon which the president supposedly relies to make his decisions, and American lives depend.

Somewhere between the CIA, the FBI, Homeland (in)Security, and FEMA, maybe there’s a lesson we should be learning?

Polimom said this @ 8:42 AM