And now for something completely irresponsible...

We talk about all the deep strategic, economic, and political factors...

...but maybe there’s a simpler explanation for why President Bush soft-pedals the Chicom menace.

From OSS.net:

OSS Note: A major European intelligence service is absolutely convinced that when George Bush was a drunken teen-ager in Beijing with his father the Ambassador, the Chinese were able to arrange extraordinarily compromising photographs, including homosexual photographs with his Chinese male tennis teacher (the boy may have been so drunk he had no idea was what happending (sic)).

OSS.net is the corporate vehicle for Open Source Intelligence evangelist and ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele. He is an untiring proselytizer for the intelligence value of unclassified information systematically collected and analyzed.

He’s got a strong pitch:

OSS.Net is the leading teacher and practitioner of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). We help our clients …[deal] with the global information explosion, especially in relation to non-traditional threats, especially sub-state tribal and non-state transnational threats, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours that can be focused on hard targets. We do this by tapping into global sources in 29+ languages…

But then Steele continues:

…the good stuff is not online, not in English, and not visible to most vendors…

Holy Mother of Mary! Is there any stuff out there better than allegations that George W. Bush was successfully romanced by his Chinese male tennis teacher?

I don’t think so.

Mr. Steele has achieved a certain credibility and visibility in his field, though it isn’t apparent what kind of success OSS.net has enjoyed in supplying its services to paying customers. However, in today’s highly-politicized procurement environment, I wouldn’t count on a lot of contracts from President Bush’s DNI or CIA.