One person's arrogance can endanger others

Today a caller to the Rush Limbaugh show identified herself as having worked in the past at the CIA. She was calling in response to news reports this week indicating that President Obama attends only one-half of his daily intelligence briefings. She pointed out that the briefings are very skeletal, touching very briefly on a number of topics, and the whole idea is to give the President the leeway to ask questions that probe for more details, like, "who said that, or "where did this information come from?"

The White House responded to the criticisms of Obama's lack of attendance at the meetings by saying that Barack Obama is the most sophisticated reader of intelligence material. However, as the caller implied, if someone thinks they know it all, and is arrogant, he is very likely going to miss important information that could only be obtained by raising questions of the intelligence officers. Failure to ask questions may put our nation in jeopardy. She pointed out that both Presidents Bush had a minimum of six briefings each week, regardless of where they were in the world.