intelligence reform or reshuffle?

Here's an article about the new intelligence bill. There is a controversy over whether the new "chief intelligence advisor" will have enough power to accomplish what's needed. The initial version of the bill gave much more power to the position, but Republicans in the House held up passage of the bill until they could scale back some of those powers. Now, I'm not an expert, but if this new bill does amount to a bureaucratic reshuffling that does nothing to protect our country from terrorism, I do know that there is one man to blame for that: Dennis Hastert. The original bill would have passed easily, but House Speaker Hastert wouldn't bring the bill up for a vote until it would win a majority of Republican votes. (They really are doing their best to pretend like Democrats don't exist, aren't they?) Here are some excerpts from the article:

"Above all, the new structure has the president's chief intelligence advisor several bureaucratic layers removed from the analysts and clandestine operatives who actually gather and try to make sense of enemy secrets."

"But Congress whittled away at other powers that the Sept. 11 panel had urged. For example, although the commission said the director should have the power to hire and dismiss the agency chiefs, the final bill gave the director only "the right to concur in [their] appointment."

"And rather than have explicit control over how agencies spend their money, the director is to "monitor the implementation and execution" of such spending and report problems to the president and Congress."

On the plus side, the article quotes Roemer, one of the members of the 911 panel, as saying: "I'm sure there will be things that need to be ironed out in the future. But I'm confident this is the way to begin better communications among intelligence agencies, better cooperation and better sharing of intelligence."