Can we scatter the CIA to the winds now as JFK intended to do? I don’t even care if basically the same organization still exists with a different name. We need a fresh start.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Well knock me over with a fucking feather!!!
Like there was ever any doubt that the whole torture thing was one of the most criminal endeavors in the history of this country. Every one of these fuckers should never be able to show their face in public again. They are simply loathsome and evil people. They WANTED to torture. And, in their minds, 9-11 gave them the justification and rationale necessary to do it. Next to slavery, this might well be the biggest stain on the moral fiber of our country.
We have done far more damage to our country than Bin Laden ever did. We disrespected those who were lost on sept 11 when our so-called leaders destroyed the rule of law that used to make our country great.
We reacted exactly as Bin Laden hoped we would. And sadly, there is still a significant minority among us who think we didn’t go far enough.
Nothing new under the sun.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
The terrorists have won.
“Next to slavery, this might well be the biggest stain on the moral fiber of our country”
I think the genocidal actions taken against Native Americans would a more serious contender. Lots of moral stain to go around.
So, to the torture apologists (not many here, I hope), if “torture works” is sufficient justification, why isn’t “genocide works” a valid justification?
(unfortunately, for some species of monster, they’re perfectly okay with torture, slavery AND genocide…just shoot ’em and improve humanity, m’kay?)
Lying works too.
If Obama shut the CIA down it might be his greatest act as president. From my point of view, the CIA has done almost everything wrong and gotten almost nothing right. Their “victories”, like installing puppet dictators in Iran or Vietnam, or arming the Muhajadeen in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation, all too quickly turned into terrible disasters. Their data collection and predictive capabilities have been terrible, from way overstating the military strength of the Soviet Union in the days of the cold war to whiffing on 9/11 and being caught off-guard on the Arab Spring. Their mere existence has fostered more anti-american hostility than any other US organization.
Get rid of the CIA! Just get rid of it.
If Obama looked like he wanted to shut the CIA down, he might get JFKed.
An organization that is, virtually by definition, both criminal and pathologically dishonest, misled Congress and the public?!?! Next you’ll be telling us the sun rises in the east.
But the CIA isn’t even the biggest problem any more – though its post-9/11 transformation into an independent, lawless paramilitary operation makes it extraordinarily dnagerous. But the NSA has a far larger budget now; the Defense Intelligence Agency – built as a parallel intelligence operation during the Bush years because Dick Cheney didn’t like the analysis the CIA was giving him – is nearly as large; and there are at least three dozen other “black budget” departments and agencies – that we know of – operating with absolutely no functional oversight, let alone public transparency. And each and every one of them is antithetical to democratic values, ours as well as anyone else’s.
That’s the problem. For far too many of our ruling elites, of both parties (yes, I’m looking at you, Hillary. You, too, DiFi), “democracy” is a convenient smokescreen, not a core value. And that’s the biggest reason why, in only a couple of generations, the rest of the world has collectively gone from admiring American democracy to considering the US the single greatest threat to world peace. Both at home and abroad, we almost never practice what we preach.
Sure would like to see an accounting of the $5 billion we spent to overthrow the various governments in Ukraine. Doubt that much of it was run through the CIA.
Please keep in mind that it is CONGRESS that refuses to allow the PRESIDENT and DCI to even so much as take the Agency’s drones away. President Obama has attempted to do more to bring the Agency under control than any president other than Kennedy, and Congress has blocked him as hard as they have blocked any element of his program, while we for some reason continue to obsess over the techies at the National Security Agency. Now Senators Feinstein and Wyden are annoyed with the CIA but I’m afraid their attention spans are not very long.
Our best hope is that this is now personal for Diane Feinstein. That’s what it seems to take for some people. Feinstein may have been good once, and maybe I just think this because I am not aware of everything she does, but Feinstein seems a lot like a republican to me, at least on foreign policy and intelligence matters.
Feinstein knows on which side her bread is buttered. “Good?” Not likely. Only a proven intelligence asset/ally would ever even be considered for the chairmanship of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Do you know its full name?
“The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence”
Hmmmm…I wonder who does the “selecting”, eh?
Hmmmmmm…
It’s a house of mirrors.
What you see ain’t what you get.
Bet on it.
AG
Bingo!!!
As long as the American people cling to the dream that was imposed on them in civics classes and by the governmental media complex…checks and balances, a three-part governmental system, rule by elected peers, “It’s a free country,” “All men are created equal” and so on…then the awful reality of the situation will remain hidden. I do not believe that a president since JFK…with the possible exception of Bush I, who was himself part of the inner circle of the intelligence establishment…had a ghost of a chance at “scattering the CIA to the winds,” as Booman so innocently posts above. And of course Bush I had no intention of doing so.
The CIA…and the other security state apparati…now are the winds, and if anyone were to come within a country mile of “scattering” them, said person would soon find him or herself in some kind of serious danger. Need I point out fates of JFK and RFK? Nixon, too…probably for other reasons.
Fuck with the bull, you get the horns.
Bet on it.
AG
Cheap cynicism and ten dollars will get you clean underwear and a bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale down at Bob’s Liquor & Laundry.
Me, I still believe in the Rule of Law. Sure there are bad actors, and sure there are institutional imperatives that Bush exploited to the fullest in advancing his agenda and will oppose reform like a basket of rabid weasels, but at the end of the day the Law and the common decency of the vast majority of people will carry the field.
I hope so, indycam. I sincerely hope so. I was sure of it in the ’50s. Not so sure now.
You write:
I guess it depends on your definition of the phrase “at the end of the day,” indycam.
My own “day”…the time that I have been actively observing American politics…began with the murder of JFK. I have yet to see any sign that the intelligence coup created on that day has in any way whatsoever receded. They have certainly gotten more subtle in their tactics…no more bullets to the head for important people, now they just use their captive centrist media to non-person them before they can even become important enough to be a threat…but their strategic aims are still the same. Control of the system from a position of secrecy. And…they have gotten much richer, much more powerful and much, much more “legal.” That is…much of their heretofore sub rose their power has in the last 14 post-9/11 years been legislated into law.
Uh oh!!!
Thy don’t hardly even have to break any laws anymore!!!
UH oh!!!
You are right, of course…the vast majority of people are indeed “decent”. But I am not at all sure that “common decency” will carry the field. Most people are too decent to be able to even imagine the levels of evil that exist in mankind’s controllers, let alone do something about it. When things get too bad the “decent people” march to the streets and countries have revolutions.
A strange word, “revolution.”
The Google definition is both twofold and completely contradictory.
So when so-called revolutions forcibly overthrow “a government or social order in favor of a new system,” what invariably happens…as can be so plainly seen in the new Egyptian military rule that has finally followed the overthrow of the old military rule following the “Arab Spring” of less than three years ago…what they are really doing is making a circle and invariably coming back to the same place that they occupied when your “decent people” finally got so uncomfortable that they risked their middle and working class asses to try to make things better.
So it goes.
Over and over and over and over again.
The only thing that changes is the length of time that the revolution takes to make a true 360 degree turn.
Egypt?
Less than 3 years.
Russia?
From the breakup of the U.S.S.R. in 1990-1991 to the present beginnings of a new Russian Bear? 24 years.
The U.S.? Since the 1963 coup d’etat?
50+ years.
It’s overdue, of course.
Any day now.
Aaaaany day now…
But don’t hold your breath.
Why?
Because the U.S. media machine has proven to be the most effective mind-control instrument ever produced by mankind. The current control mechanism will eventually break down just as has every other one…this time due to either economic collapse from within or cataclysmic attack from outside forces (Including natural forces like say “The Big One” earthquake in the west or a decades-long drought plus coastal flooding due to climate change.)…and when it does break down there will be hell to pay on a grand scale. But eventually…provided that life itself doesn’t end on this planet…that revolution will also come full circle and the controllers will once again control the “decent people.” Just as it has always been.
You call this “cheap cynicism?”
I call it accurate history. Taking the long view.
So it goes.
Meanwhile…wake the fuck up.
The only way to forestall such a fate would be if the people of the U.S. all woke the fuck up at once.
I ain’t holding my breath on that one, either.
Not from what I see.
So meanwhile it’s step by step for each and every one of us.
Myself included.
Good luck.
We’re all gonna need it.
Later…
AG
Cheap cynicism today was conspiracy theory back in the sixties.
“I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I’ve always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I’m concerned about all of this because it isn’t a German phenomenon; it’s a human phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow man.
“What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity.
“But in the final analysis, it’s based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society.
“Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We’re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn’t the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.
“I’ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I’ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government’s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make.
“But I’ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.” -Jim Garrison, 1967
Yes Bob!!!
Garrison got non-personed by the selfsame media.
And the beat goes on.
AG
What can you expect from an organization formed by the merger of the OSS and Wehrmacht Military Intelligence?
The real spy mantra.
AG
Yes. Thank you. Sixty-seven years of failed legislation is enough.
We want our control of our government, respect for law, and all those other things we were promised for winning World War II. Freedom, peace, and prosperity…wasn’t that why we spent $12 trillion on the Cold War over 42 years? And have probably spent an equal amount since on nothing at all except highly risky busy-work jobs.
You had a taste of the rule of law in Chicago. How did it taste?
I’m starting to think that my ancestors had more personal freedom living under the mafia.
It tasted like the rule of the mafia, just without the cheesy 1950s suits.
Indeed, I’m sure it did.
I’m glad you’ve come around to my way of thinking at last.
Good point. The NSA actually performs a useful service; one can’t run a major power without adequate signals intelligence.
The CIA, FYI, really is a gang of thugs who have been out of control for decades. I vote we disband the organization, salt the earth where their offices used to be, and contract out any wet work to the Bulgarians – their ardour for the Russians appears to be on the wane.
A signals intelligence that reports what it knows to the public is as effective as a secret signals intelligence.
As the private sector drives encryption to secure its own communications, a signals intelligence will find less information at higher expense anyway.
Finally, we need to question the “run a major power” assumption as a goal in terms of its purpose. How does it serve the citizens of the United States and not become and end in itself or a matter of vainglory?
Finally, to have no entangling alliances means that we have no permanent enemies. Russia-fixation is what led us down the neo-con primrose path in Ukraine in the first place.
No, you are wrong there. Minding your own business does not protect you from the envious nor from sadists who just like hurting people. I learned that as a pre-schooler on the streets of Chicago.
What would it take to make peace with the various criminals, religious fanatics, and dictators who threaten our way of life? The CIA and the hawks would tell us that they must be monitored, tracked down, and destroyed… or at least contained.
Perhaps that is true… but it assumes that our “enemies” actually threaten our way of life. Their worst attack was on 9/11. Why did bin Laden want to attack us? He had his reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks
Even if you reject these reasons as a smoke-screen, it is surely true that over the last 70 years the US has engaged in superpower politics just about everywhere in the world. We “saved” the world from communism and Soviet domination but also imposed our culture on them. We looted and pillaged and manipulated virtually every society because of our belief in “American exceptionalism.” When that arrogance runs into opposition, we attack. And so now we must give up our constitutional rights in order to defend ourselves against those who oppose our interference in their lives.
Maybe we should just stop interfering. I’m sure they will still hate us for another generation or two, but eventually it will fade. Even Germany was able to reform itself in just a few decades after the fall of Hitler. If they can do it, we can do it too.
No, we did that to enrich the 1%.
America is exceptional. It is one of the few nations not based on ethnicity. Americans are among the most giving people in the world whenever there is a typhoon or earthquake or the like. American C.A.R.E. packages, freely donated by ordinary citizens, prevented the starvation of one third of the Japanese people in the aftermath of WW II. That is an exceptional thing in history.
What similar things can you say about Russia?
Torture was the issue over which I broke with the recently-departed Bartcop of fond memory and tequila treehouse. Bartcop thought torture had limited uses, but that they could be efficacious used in the right amounts with the right suspects.
I disagreed and finally had to quit going to the Bartcop website because even after we flogged the issue to death both online and on the telephone, neither of us budged, and I didn’t want to be unpleasantly surprised by a pro-torture post from the proprietor.
Most of my argument against torture had to do with its ineffectiveness in yielding useful information, as well as objections to its morality. How do we call ourselves the good guys if we torture people in the name of hunting down the bad guys who torture and kill people?
But one other aspect of the anti-torture position is on display here in the leaked portions of the report: That is, that permission to torture (in certain well-defined and strictly controlled circumstances, of course) soon slides into the obligation to torture captives. Even the most willing, forthcoming and cooperative snitch is going to raise some suspicion in his captors’ minds: How do we know we’re getting all the information this guy has to offer? Better strap him down to the waterboard and be 100% sure.
The alternative is that hundreds, thousands, millions will die if we aren’t thorough in our interrogation, using every enhancement at our disposal. Can we live with ourselves knowing that if we’d just pushed this guy a little harder, we would have knocked loose the crucial bit of information that would have led us to unmasking these bloodthirsty terrorists’ nefarious scheme? The prospect is too much to bear; heat up the branding irons.
And, sure enough, we get the report saying that torture was going ahead on captives even when it was apparent that they didn’t have any useful information, because someone somewhere either had to be completely sure, or had to report to their superior that they had done everything possible (even illegal) with this captive.
It’s disgraceful, it’s shameful, and it really should result in some prosecutions for crimes against humanity.