Monday, July 13, 2009

Let's render the CIA useless.

Yeah, that makes sense.

One of the frequent refrains we heard after 9/11 was that we'd lost significant capacity in our intelligence services. Well, now, in a purely politically driven pursuit of GWB and Dick Cheney (Note: they're not in office anymore), our current administration is apparently considering investigating and indicting members of the CIA for doing their jobs.

Last month, Pelosi was calling them liars(she apparently wasn't listening while she was briefed about waterboarding).
The Dems are now saying the CIA hid secret projects (that, according to the Wall Street Journal, were intended to help kill people like Osama bin Laden) and now, we're going to prosecute.

Beautiful.

I can't imagine a more effective way to encourage our CIA operatives to shift permanently into CYA mode. If with every new administration our intelligence services have to worry whether of not they're going to be prosecuted for doing their jobs, we will end up with no intelligence at all.

If there have been laws broken in the intelligence services, the PRESS IS NOT THE WAY to address those issues. If you're a legislator or the head of the Justice Dept. with half a brain, you pursue these issues behind closed doors with the utmost integrity and prudence.

1 comment:

  1. Here's the really spooky thing. By opening up the flood gates the way previous administrations have to the operations of not just the CIA but our military, we've shot ourselves in the foot by allowing a crippling amount of oversight. We've opened up the public to a certain amount of information that they never wanted to see: the realities of war and power. As a result, they can't believe that organizations like the CIA are necessary or their tax dollars are going to fund something to "morally bankrupt." Here's the problem that the Democrats have given us THIS time. By the time someone gets in office that knows what the hell they're doing, the transparency into these organs of our government will be entrenched in the name of "freedom" and all that other garbage that the Fed spouts at us to legitimize the things they do. Re-establishing the necessary secrecy will cause a panic in the media because it'll look like whoever's trying to fix the machine is establishing a police state instead and the conservative elements of our government will, conveniently enough, superficially resemble something from Nazi Germany. The ensuing row from the newshounds will be shrill and effective.

    The question is at this point is how to set the tone? How to be pro-active instead of reactive?

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