<Who wanted to "abolish the CIA"?

The most prominent one would have been Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who proposed legislation to do just that, but he's not a Senator anymore so maybe he doesn't count. Most of the others were pundits and think tanks. While many of them are, indeed, leftist, others I have to admit, are not leftist but libertarian.

Why isn't the FBI responsible for following up on domestic threats and the CIA overseas?

Ideally, they are. As we can see, the problem arises when information needs to be rapidly transmitted between the two agencies in order to "connect the dots" between foreign and domestic events.

As for conservatives being "accountable," I'm not sure how to nail that down, considering Republicans and Democrats tend to blame each other for pretty much everything back to the fall of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. I think we have established pretty clearly that neither party comes out squeaky clean in the failure to prevent the 9-11 attacks.

Specifically discussing the Bush Administraton, I will agree with you at least so far as saying that there are a number of people who should have been canned some time ago, including the leftover Clinton CIA head, and Norm Mineta, just to name a couple. Some people a lot more right-wing than I am think Powell should have hit the bricks too, but I personally am more ambivalent about that. I am a big fan of Rice, and think she's doing just fine, thank you, although given her background she would have been a lot more effective if the Cold War was still on.

Given the simultaneous rants of many liberals about the destruction of our civil liberties and the impotence of our intelligence and law enforcement operations, I would really be interested in your take (or anyone else's here) on how to reconcile these two seemingly opposing factors.