You call this reform?

The Senate is expected to pass the 9/11 intelligence reform bill late this afternoon after the House passed the legislation 336-75 last night.
But, as Fred Kaplan points out, the intelligence-reform bill "doesn't really reform much. Certainly it falls far short of the measures urged by the 9/11 commission, which set the legislative process in motion. The basic reason for this shortfall is simple: The Bush White House doesn't want reform.

The commission's main proposal was to create a new national intelligence director, who would coordinate and control the vast, disparate, and sometimes quarrelsome array of federal departments, agencies, and sub-agencies that comprise the U.S. "intelligence community."
Initially, the Senate passed a bill that closely reflected the commission's suggestions, which a handful of Republicans in the House firmly rejected. House Speaker Dennis Hastert even refused to bring a similar bill to the floor for a vote.

The compromise bill that's about to pass —and that President Bush, at last, has endorsed— establishes a national intelligence director but one with scant authority. The key passage in the bill making this so notes that this director will not 'abrogate the statutory responsibilities' of the Department of Defense."

In other words, because of bureacratic power fights, and much like with the Homeland Security Department, these reforms really aren't significant reforms at all. Donald Rumsfeld gets to keep his power and even three years after 9/11, and after the failure in Iraq, there remains no reform in our intelligence structure.

How do these guys make us safer again?