Going to War?

Erick Erickson lays out his thoughts about the recent killing of CIA employees last week in this post at Red State. Erick suggests that the President's public 'outpouring' over these deaths poses a threat to the Agency:

People tell me the President’s rush to acknowledge the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan and mourn the deaths openly, publicly, and via press release is a huge no no. The CIA and greater intelligence community would prefer not to have the attention put on them. Additionally, because the President took the time to draft a blanket statement focused on the CIA in general instead of individually and more privately focusing on the families of the victims, it acknowledges the CIA’s work in Afghanistan, acknowledges that the attack has an impact on the CIA, and gives the terrorists a new recruiting tool — “you too can cause America to publicly mourn the loss of their spies.”

 An interesting thought but what really caught my attention was the addendum to the original post:

UPDATED: Take the information above and couple it with this. The White House is subtly blaming the intelligence community for the failure to deduce the Delta/Northwest attack.


Why?


Presidential aides are concerned that Obama will somehow be unfairly accused of dropping the ball on the fight against terrorist in Yemen

Because the President is worried about being blamed, the White House is trying to blame the CIA while at the same time undermining the CIA through a rush to publicize the Afghan attack.

What Erick describes sounds to me like the beginnings of yet another fight with the Agency, akin to what we saw last year with Speaker Pelosi calling the Agency a bunch of liars when it came to intel briefings about waterboarding years earlier. So, if the President is blaming the agency that's not going to go over well at Langley.

As we witnessed over the last 8 years, when push comes to shove the Agency can damage the President greatly. Adding to this also is the potential for exposing CIA operatives to legal prosecution over interrogation methods which may come to light in the trials of KSM and others when those start.

So my question is simply this: Will the CIA declare war on another President?