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The CIA really bothers me, but it alone is a red herring. Congress consciously and sometimes inadvertently commissions additional organizations. All Federal age
by vmception 5y ago
The CIA really bothers me, but it alone is a red herring. Congress consciously and sometimes inadvertently commissions additional organizations. All Federal agencies are created by statute, and they can autonomously create others subsidiaries and divisions. There are several organizations that are specifically in intelligence and do all sorts of messed up things for supposed national security or geopolitical purposes, and they are mostly unknown, even heads of state are unfamiliar with them not because they are secret but because theyre mostly irrelevant.
So to focus on the CIA allows the rest of it to go on unimpededed.
Its like hiring a model to act like your close friend so that your girlfriend focuses all her attention on her waiting for infidelity with that specific person and you can always disprove that there wasn't .... with her. But no further scrutiny goes on, when there should be.
- adamrezich 5y agointelligence agencies have too much power and independence from government. I think this is one of those things that pretty much everyone agrees with regardless of political affiliation, yet nothing gets done about it, and these entities keep growing and growing
- V_Terranova_Jr 5y agoAgree wholeheartedly. Within government, the tendency is to avoid the extremely uncomfortable discussions pushing back on questionable activities other government entities are engaged in, especially if those activities can be ascribed to some perceived good intent. Even harder if you learn of something questionable that has been going on for a long time - it's grandfathered in by both a long time in the pursuit of "good intent", and by you being a new objector when lots of people who came before you did not object.
- mc32 5y agoAnd from the pushback received by the previous admin, it’s looks like they don’t take kindly to getting sidelined or downsized... They spied on congress during the Obama years, they spied on the Trump admin when he was a candidate, and then of course the embarrassing revelation that they got caught spying on allies —which is par for the course, but still.
- xtian 5y agoIt generally doesn’t go well for anyone who tries to do something about it.
- landemva 5y agoWith black budgets shielded from adequate oversight, the people working in some of these agencies have escaped the rule of law and receive funding that allows rogue behavior. To some extent this is human nature, though taxpayers should stop funding it. A 50% cut in federal spending would be a good start.
- luffapi 5y agoIt’s thought one of the main reasons the CIA is involved in drug trafficking is to raise funds for operations without having to get congressional approval or other oversight.
- eganist 5y agoso basically just Iran Contra but not yet discovered.
- anticodon 5y agoJust look at the amount of heroin produced in Afghanistan before US invasion and after (hint: it's increased by orders of magnitude). Even more: US invaded Afghanistan immediately after Taliban managed to destroy almost all heroin production. I don't think it's a coincidence. There're reports of people who visited Afghanistan after US invasion and they reported that it feels like US army guards poppy fields. It would be very easy for US to destroy them, but they behave like they didn't care. I think that's was the main reason for Afghanistan incursion: to kill two birds with one stone. Earn lots of money and flood Russia (which US hates) with drugs.
- fedreserved 5y agoNothing like invading Afghanistan the heart of poppy production with a us army. You would imagine we could shut down the production fairly easy, if that's the point.
- pjc50 5y agoDefund the (secret) police?
- dcolkitt 5y agoI think it’s actually shocking how few people seem to agree with this. In particular, the speed with which most of the left pivoted to reverence for the “intelligence community” simply because it was politically expedient after 2016. How many times did we hear breathless tirades about how the president wasn’t “respecting” the recommendations of intelligence agencies, or leaking classified intelligence. As if democratic representative of the American people was responsible to the unelected agency heads instead of vice versa. I voted against Trump twice, but when you get to the point where not even POTUS has the right to challenge the CIA and NSA, you’re no longer living in a democracy.
- yipbub 5y agoI'm not convinced. The criticism against the agencies is that they grossly overstep their bounds and commit atrocities. Not that they have bad intel. Trump quite clearly saying whatever was politically expedient.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> In particular, the speed with which most of the left pivoted to reverence for the “intelligence community” simply because it was politically expedient after 2016. I think you are either confusing the Democratic center-right (whuch has always had reverence for the intelligence community and defense establishment) with “most of the left", or confusing opposing abnormally blatant political abuse of (and by political officials within) the national security apparatus with reverence for that same apparatus, or both.
- krrrh 5y agoHm, I think GP is talking about how the left-of-center media in the NY Times & MSNBC called out goons like John Brennan and James Clapper for lying in front of congress about domestic surveillance and then lionized them because they were convenient enemies of Trump. You can relabel these left-of-center outlets as center-right but that’s not a common perspective.
- sangnoir 5y ago
- DSingularity 5y agoThis isn’t an “oops we didn’t structure the organization with sufficient oversight” kind problem. Nothing gets done about it because things quickly devolve into zero-sum games when nations are involved. You will certainly lose when you decide not to play. The American oligarchy decided they don’t want to lose out on juicy resources to those who will play dirty so here we are.
- baq 5y agoplease suggest how to reconcile that with adversary nation states which don't have the same qualms about citizen rights.
- belatw 5y agoIf it makes you feel better more and more of this gets outsourced to spy and mercenary companies like Palantir, Facebook, Google and Blackwater.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Talanes 5y agoExactly, if you want to do something truly illegal, like dosing citizens with LSD, you need shady government agencies. But so much of the shady shit the government wants now is only illegal for the government to do, so much easier just to let a private company do their data-collecting legally, and buy that.
- kwdc 5y agoExcept that after you hire that model, you later discover she set up a multi-million-dollar per day cocaine operation to fly drugs into the country to fund her lavish lifestyle.
- vmception 5y agoScared money doesn't make money. I would mildly chuckle though. Mostly because of models and cocaine. Not the CIA off-balance sheet reference.
- vmception 5y agoAlternate comment as there are at least 3 women in the man's life in this scenario: A man couldn't decide which of his girl friends to stay with. As a test, he decided to give each woman $5,000 to see how they would spend it. The first girlfriend went out and got herself a complete makeover. She told him, "I spend the money so I could look pretty for you because I love you so much." The second went shopping and bought the man new golf clubs, an iPad and an 80-inch flatscreen television. She said, "I bought these gifts for you because I love you so much." The third woman took the $5,000 and invested it in the stock market, doubled her investment, returned $5,000 to the man and reinvested the rest. She said, "I am investing the rest of the money for our future because I love you so much." The man thought long and hard about how each of his girlfriends had spent the money, and then he decided to stay with the one with the biggest breasts.
- sneak 5y agoThe CIA hacked US congressional computers to cover up the CIA lying to Congress about the CIA's torture program. They got caught. Nobody got in trouble. There are at least four crimes in here, one being a crime against humanity. The CIA is not accountable whatsoever to the legislature.
- specialist 5y agoLegislators and agencies are antagonists. Based on my participation in politics. Local, county, state, but not federal, so YMMV. Think bureaucracy, the Deep State, ambitious climbers, technocrats, whatever. Observing agency heads run circles around elected officials completely flipped me from "yay term limits" to "pay electeds more, give them more staff." FWIW, I think everyone should run for office at least once. Folk understanding of politics isn't even wrong. Becoming and serving as an elected really sucks. Least of which is serving as arrow catchers for all of govts faults.