Speaking of Camus, let us recall the glory years of the GWOT. A columnist published by Salon dot com, having no inkling of the many media in which the president's genius would flourish, wondered, Why is George Bush reading Camus?

I'm not sure what to make of this. It's usually college freshmen who suddenly take up the French existentialist's slim volume, and then usually to impress some literature major with wavy hair. Perhaps it was an act of glasnost: Bush has spent much of his presidency dismissing the French, so now he reads one of the country's literary heroes and goes public about it.

At the time, I confess, I was alarmed by occasional press reports of FBI missions overseas, each claiming another frontier of US jurisdiction. "Declassified" explanations for this domestic agency's "deployment" to Iraq (Abu Graib) and Afghanistan (bin Laden and conspirators) easily dissolved into "Fog of War: rumors, propaganda, and just plain bullshit." The president enthusiastically spoke to Quantico's academy of the creation of "the National Security Service within the FBI." 2005.

I appreciate our Attorney General, Al Gonzales, who has joined us today. General, thank you for being here. I want to thank Ambassador John Negroponte, the Director of the National Intelligence. Thanks for coming, Mr. Director. I appreciate Director Bob Mueller, of the FBI -- doing a fantastic job. Thank you, Bob, for coming. Director Porter Goss of the CIA; Administrator Karen Tandy [GENDER GAP ALERT?!] of the Drug Administration -- the Drug Enforcement Administration -- (Laughter.) Thank you, Karen.

I appreciate the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner of Virginia, joining us today. Senator, thank you for coming. Senator George Allen from Virginia is with us, as well. And I appreciate the Vice Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Curt Weldon, for being with us today. Thank you all for being here. (Applause.)

Some of these persons have retired from the limelight, but their legacy endures --as strangely as axes of evil and alliance define a 'homeland'.

To defend our homeland, we need the best possible intelligence. We face a new kind of enemy. This enemy hides in caves and plots in shadows, and then emerges to strike and kill in cold blood in our cities and communities. Staying a step ahead of this enemy and disrupting their plans is an unprecedented challenge for our intelligence community. We're reforming our intelligence agencies to meet the new threats. We've established a new National Counterterrorism Center where we are bringing together all the available intelligence on terrorist threats. We're sharing intelligence across all levels of government -- the federal level, the state level, and the local level.

We're working with our allies to share information, and to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Thanks to the hard work of hundreds in our intelligence community, we have stopped a number of grave threats to the American people. Together with our allies, we uncovered and dismantled Libya's nuclear program. We worked with Pakistan and other nations to shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading network. And since September the 11th, our coalition has disrupted a number of al Qaeda terrorist plots, arrested al Qaeda operatives here to case specific U.S. targets, and caught others trying to sneak into our country.
[...]
One of the new steps we're taking is the creation of the National Security Service within the FBI, to more completely integrate the Bureau's work with the intelligence community. The purpose of this change is to strengthen the FBI, so it not only investigates terrorist crimes after they happen, but the FBI can be more capable to stop the terrorist acts before they happen. The FBI is in the fight. The FBI has deployed its personnel across the world, in Iraq and Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror. FBI agents are questioning captured terrorists and uncovering information that will help prevent new attacks on our homeland.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.