7 ms·
Numerous well-documented cases of CIA misbehavior in the past has resulted in basically nothing, so my money is on "no".
by wayoutthere 7y ago
Numerous well-documented cases of CIA misbehavior in the past has resulted in basically nothing, so my money is on "no".
- wallace_f 7y agoYea, well I'm sorry, but I'm too busy being outraged by gay abortions or toxic masculinity to pay attention to this. And when it comes time to vote, I'm voting either on one inflammatory issue, or doing what's best for me and voting for whoever offers me more economic incentives.
- Nerdfest 7y agoWhat's best for you and what will give more financial reward are not always the same thing.
- wallace_f 7y agoThat was actually part of the point I was trying to make.
- wayoutthere 7y agoNot sure how that's relevant at all? The CIA has often operated far outside the law regardless of who is in office.
- dragonwriter 7y agoThe poster you were responding to seemed to be attempting to illustrate an explanation of why the CIA gets away with that regardless of whoever is in office, so your post explains exactly how it's relevant rather than offering a reason to doubt it's relevance.
- wayoutthere 7y agoAh, that's why I find sarcasm to be a pretty clumsy argumentation tactic -- it confuses the intent of a statement when used without knowledge of the position you're speaking from. Better to just come out and say what you mean.
- dragonwriter 7y agoI don't think it was sarcasm at all; the main bit of rhetorical artistry (beyond merging issues of concern to the same side so that gays and abortion becomes “gay abortions”) is the adoption of first person singular to stand in for third-person plural, which presents the issues distracting the two main factions as affecting a single actor. Replace the second use of “I'm” with “the voters are” and the argument is quite direct.
- chungus_khan 7y agoYeah, if Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, 28 Mordad, MKUltra, etc have taught us anything it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fact, and usually less than that.
- wayoutthere 7y agoI mean, the cynic in me says that the US needs a group of morally-compromised people willing to do bad things. But ultimately I don't think the short-term gains from that kind of activity are worth the long-term damage they do to our national conscience. Edit: To clarify, I am advocating against this behavior -- it's not worth compromising our ethics for the sake of accomplishing goals in the short term. Cynicism is no way to run a country.
- cambalache 7y agoI am not American, and I would agree with you if most of the operations were things like Stuxnet or Bin Laden's killing. But many of the most atrocious things committed by the CIA were totally gratuitous not helping one iota to the safety (perceived or real) of the American populace.
- Kalium 7y agoThe trick with intelligence agencies is that the general public only ever hears about a small number of operations. A large intelligence apparatus undertakes a great many, most of which succeed or fail in relative silence. This makes it impossible to generalize fairly about "most of the operations". You're working from a data set so heavily filtered as to be useless for that.
- fit2rule 7y agoThe corruption of government starts with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets.
- 7y ago
- jklinger410 7y agoThe FBI misbehavior sure did a number on the Mueller investigation.
- 50ckpuppet 7y agoFBI misbehavior was the Mueller investigation. ftfy
- compuguy 7y agoThis is going down a political and/or ideological track that isn't really contributing to the comments in this thread.
- turk73 7y agoWhy can't some of you accept the fact that the Steele Dossier was faked and that the FBI was part of a coup attempt? It's as clear as day what went on there.
- chance_state 7y agoWhat negative impact do you think "FBI misbehavior" had on the Mueller investigation?
- jklinger410 7y agoNot sure why you put that in quotes. It's also not what I "think" but a pretty widely shared opinion. I'm not really taking sides here, it's common knowledge that the FBI botched their investigation of Trump/Russia. 1. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/11/fbi-trump-russia-investigation-report/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/11/fbi-trump-russia-investi... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report-russia-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...
- compuguy 7y agoI thought the serious concerns were in reference to how they handled the warrants to wiretap Carter Page, which the NYT article you linked to in your previous comment mentions: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report-russia-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...
- cm2187 7y agoCIA spying on foreign entities is not the CIA misbehaving. The CIA trafficking drug to finance an operation can be called a misbehavior. But the CIA spying on foreign entities is what Congress funds the CIA for.
- parthdesai 7y agoWhat about CIA using "Enhanced Interrogation" techniques aka torturing people?
- Consultant32452 7y ago"We tortured some folks."
- wavefunction 7y agoThe torture was outsourced to Egypt and Syria and Guantanamo Bay contractors. The gig economy!
- dragonwriter 7y ago> What about CIA using "Enhanced Interrogation" techniques aka torturing people? How many criminal prosecutions have those people have proceeded after the torture? I mean, since we're talking about consequences on extradition for criminal prosecution and criminal prosecution itself, that would seem to be the relevant measure.
- sneak 7y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-interrogation-report.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence...
- stevehawk 7y agoI reckon the implication is that other countries won't allow extradition because of this behavior. That it would give them plenty of reason to thumb their nose at the US government.