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The CIA continues to cover itself in shit and serve as a national embarrassment. The time has long since passed that we need to unravel this mess. From botched
by ch4s3 4y ago
The CIA continues to cover itself in shit and serve as a national embarrassment. The time has long since passed that we need to unravel this mess. From botched coups, to exploding cigars, torture chambers, and burned informants the CIA seems only capable of pissing away money and making us look terrible internationally.
- petre 4y agoMaybe the renewed cold war will prompt the CIA to get their shit together. The Russians have been actively sabotaging things in the EU through useful idiots and corrupt politicians. One person who was able to sucessfully trick them so far is Marine LePen, who gladly takes their money while she keeps losing elections.
- colechristensen 4y agoAnd in what circumstances would you hear about their successes?
- poopnugget 4y ago
- saiya-jin 4y agoWorld peace? Enemies forced to cooperate? Wars won? I mean the list would be almost endless. Just like the list of their proved fuckups and outright careless evil done because 'we can' and 'who is gonna stop us'
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- boomboomsubban 4y agoLooking at recent stories about the CIA; there's this one, then one about how a report saying the CIA warned Germany about oil pipeline attacks in the summer somehow leaked, and one of then recreating a terrorists hideout they bombed. They seem to enjoy bragging.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 4y agoWe can look back to the now public records of the early days of the agency and see that they were fuck ups from the start. We can see glimpses from KGB records exposed in the mitrokhin archives. There are leaks, and exposed diplomatic cables. Nothing paints a positive picture. Moreover, the constant embarrassment is very real.
- the_af 4y agoI think there are (at least) two failure modes for this kind of agencies: 1- They fail to stop state-level enemies, they fail to predict attacks, they fail to assist friendly troops. 2- They break the laws of their own country, commit torture, treason or what can be considered crimes against humanity in the pursuit of their mission. What we are seeing belongs in the second category. Whether it's also the first is harder to assess (though like others have mentioned, their historical track record is less than stellar).
- case0x00 4y agoPrecisely. Its easy to criticize an agency when one is only privy to the failures. What the public sees is such a tiny fraction of what actually goes on, including positive publications. Its a tough aspect of working in the intelligence community honestly, and especially concerning when many people want to de-fang US foreign intelligence.
- ch4s3 4y agoAs others have pointed out they frequently brag about their alleged successes. They also lack any oversight by congress or the presidency(in practice). They’re also know to have surveilled and threatened active members of congress. They posed as a polio eradication effort to try and find Bin Laden, and failed nothing their stated aim and literally prevented the eradication of polio. It’s unforgivable. I’m not against having intelligence as an arm of the state department and accountable to congress, but the CIA is a malignancy on the body politic.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 4y agoJust look at the public record: 1. Knowing Russia would invade Ukraine - Success 2. Knowing Iraq had no WMD - Fail 3. Correctly predicting Iranian Nuclear progress/ambitions - Repeated fails 4. Knowing the USSR would collapse - Fail 5. Sept 11th - Mega fail Compare those items with candidates for success. For instance, the CIA failed to discover Sept 11th. Have they ever foiled, has anyone in the US who might work with the CIA every foiled such a large attack? No. The same for other areas: Maybe the CIA predicted North Korea would have nukes when they did. That would give them a one in 3 (the others being Iran and Iraq) success rate at WMD intelligence. Even with the "assume they got everything right that we don't KNOW they got wrong" level of credulity, they're not as good as flipping a coin...
- Fatnino 4y agoThere were idiots on YouTube already predicting the russian invasion back in autumn last year. You didn't have to be the CIA to see that it was going to happen as soon and the roads dried.
- tcmart14 4y agoYea, this one didn't take a genius. Anyone who mildly kept track of eastern European affairs and Russia knew something was about to happen as soon as Russia started moving large numbers of troops. I guess if we want to give the CIA a victory here, maybe we knew about the movements earlier because of the CIA, but the conclusion those movements came to didn't need a CIA agency to predict.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- _8j50 4y agoThe CIA is not an independent agency, they do as the ametican public tell them.
- poopnugget 4y ago
- Fatnino 4y agoWrong on both counts. The CIA has a blank check and does whatever the fuck they want. Much of it opposed by most Americans if they ever find out about it.
- _8j50 4y agoCongress and the president have oversight over anything they di. I din't see how "blank check" is relevant.
- usednet 4y ago75 years of history disagree with you. Unless you believe the public told the CIA to arm the Mujahideen, overthrow Allende, invade Panama, recruit Nazis, traffic drugs - should I go on?
- petre 4y agoArming the Mujahideen sucessfully grinded the USSR and hastened its collapse, just as arming Ukraine would hasten Russia's disintegration. The plan was sound, however both of these strategies can backfire, as we've seen in the first case.
- _8j50 4y agoDisintegration was never the goal, just like with vietnam and china the goal is containing and preventing their territorial expansion. It is a lesson learned the hard way with hitler and poland. Even knowing now about al-qaeda and 9/11, arming and training mujahideen in afghanistan was not a mistake. Ukraine having just applied for NATO membership, I would say you are comparing apples and oranges. Even the muslim NATO member Turkey that is hostile against the US despite the US giving them nukes hasn't backfired.