Sir, that's not a question with an easy answer. And she headed back to the secretaries' room, closing the curved door behind her.Īnd they're the ones who control the guns, van Damm noted. They think we're the uncivilized ones.Īnd they think it's decent speculation, but not something to bet the ranch on. It doesn't agree with what your own people think-assuming they really think at all, the Vice President observed.Īnd that's the problem, Adler reminded them all. That's the problem with good intelligence information. No, the source doesn't produce something every day. It's quite a disappointment to learn what things are really like.
You know, out in the fleet we used to think-well, we used to hope-that decisions made in this room here were based on solid data. I just can't forget the motto of the whole intelligence community: 'We bet your life.' It's lonely out there with a fighter plane strapped to your back, risking your life on the basis of a piece of paper with somebody's opinion typed on it, when you never know the guy it's from or the data it's based on. And you can figure that the Hill will offer Taiwan any weapons system they want to buy next go-round. Congress would impeach you if you asked for it, Jack. Jesus, Scott, how do we predict what they're going to do? There are some limitations on that power, but we don't fully understand what they are, and therefore it's hard for us to enforce or to exploit them. They're kings because they have absolute power. It was already very different from ours long before Marxism arrived, and the thoughts of our old friend Karl only made things worse. Look, these guys are kings from a different culture. We have a bunch of good people, but the problem is in getting them all to agree on something when we need an important call. So, what else is going to go wrong over there? Ryan asked. Ellen he called loudly enough to get through the door.
The President knows, because he's the President, right? Then I become President, and I don't know a damned thing more than I knew the month before, but everybody out there-Ryan waved his arm at the window-thinks I'm fucking omniscient. So, I translated the battle with the Helvetii and slept that night.
But I still had to translate half a page of Caesar's goddamned Gallic Wars, and I saw the President on TV, and I figured things were okay, because he was the President of the United Goddamned States, and he-had to know what was really going on. I remember wondering if the world was going to blow up. Robby, back when I was in high school, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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