Intelligence agencies: an oxymoron if ever there was one!
Having totally missed 9/11, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, guess what? They missed Egypt too!!!
Gorilla says: “But they promise to do better, just as soon as they figure out what better means and where the hell it is!”
The CIA certainly is, so long as you’re an Afghan government official who knows something!
What’s profoundly stupid in all this is that no one in CIA human resources seems to realize that they’re getting nothing for the money: no functioning government, no defeat of the Taliban, no real control over most of the country, and no end in sight to another pointless war.
Gorilla asks: “When we will get qualified employers?”
Osama bin Laden as the FBI imagines he might look these days…
And why’s the FBI doing this? Presumably to justify their budgets, and to point out that the CIA has yet to catch America’s Most Wanted Man…
Gorilla says: “It’s all about the Trollope for these trollops!”
“There was but one thing for him;- to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.”
The tidetime folklorist wonders when accountability will be called to account and not adjusted for ability.
This Week’s Platter: “Spies” by Coldplay (learning to share when you just don’t care)
This Week’s Bait: The Astro-Thermo Underwear Suit aka The Nigerian Zander Lander
The pygmies are on the march and a catfight is coming!
The CIA’s operational impact in Afghanistan is marginally relevant, according to a report by the senior US military intelligence official in the country.
The report said US intelligence officials and analysts were “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the power-brokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.”
Even this irrelevancy seems like small beer compared to the agency’s inability to find Osama bin Laden or its hiring of a double agent Jordanian suicide bomber.
On the other hand, the Pentagon’s had 100,000 troops and 100,000 contractors in Afghanistan, and can’t say with a straight face that they’re doing much better against the Taliban or corruption.
The Afpak policy remains one of total confusion: are we after al-Qaeda, which isn’t in Afghanistan? are we propping up a corrupt government that rigged the last election? are we preparing to invade Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and the Taliban actually operate? how do we sustain economic development that’s not wholly dependent on the drug trade? how much longer will we be there?
Gorilla thinks: “We need a full brain scan before the next US bound flight of fancy!”
In the war on terror, it’s often hard to know when to laugh out loud at media coverage of our government, but today the Washington Post made that easy!
First, a stirring report on how much the Jordanians are helping us to beat the terrorists, apparently one of their intelligence officers was killed in last week’s CIA base camp bombing in Afghanistan.
Followed by the revelation later in the day that the same officer was responsible for recruiting the suicide bomber, thus setting up the worst day of death for the US intelligence community in years.
Difficult to know which intelligence service is planting these stories, or on which king’s behalf: the one in Langley or the one in Amman.
Gorilla says: “Crossing the Jordan is even more difficult when Jordan is crossing you!”
And our President praises the professionalism of his unprofessional, ineffective, fifth-rate intelligence agencies!
What else can he do? Engage in real reform? Abolish the FBI and CIA and start over? Surely you jest!
The problem, now as ever, is strictly one of accountability, from Wall Street to Langley Street: unless you know you’ll be fired, or go to prison, or be made bankrupt, or be zero’d out, there’s no incentive whatever to engage in anything other than business as usual.
Cover your ass to the end of days.
Gorilla sums it up: “Together we’re hanging separately, all they are is chads in the wind!”
Building and equipping secret prisons was right up Dusty Foggo’s alley.
And just like former CIA Director George Tenet, this sort of “success” was rewarded handsomely: no Medal of Freedom, but Executive Director of the CIA isn’t a bad consolation prize.
Alas, like many other Bush free marketeers, Dusty’s now in jail for fraud.
Gorilla concludes: “Guess this is why we can’t bring the Guantanamo detainees to America: there’s just no money in it!”
Whenever Gorilla hears the CIA’s being demoralized by the latest revelation of what the Agency’s really been up to, he wants to light a candle in the Church Of Church.
Think that sort of investigation would happen today?
Let’s see: Two of the three greatest intelligence failures in American history occurred in 2001-2003: 9/11 and WMD in Iraq.
For failing so spectacularly, the CIA Director got the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award.
Then his non-chagrined girls and boys moved on to torture, obstruction of justice, and extraordinary rendition.
The other big failure happened on 12/7/41, but the CIA wasn’t around, so no one but the American people were demoralized.
Sing me a song I haven’t heard a thousand times before!
Oh, and let’s not forget the spike that’s still in the IG’s report on torture.
What a fun bunch of non-disclosing disclosers we employ!
