dagblog - Comments for "How to Break Up the CIA"

Very fine list there...

oldenGoldenDecoy — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:07:34 +0000

Very fine list there... Thanks . . .

I do recall your comments back in June in my post here:

Where to Start to Walk Back the NSA Actions?

Now. Will someone please write a book titled:

Will the Real Edward Snowden Please Stand Up!

Or ... Maybe someone has already started on the novel.

Is Edward Snowden an NSA Mole? - by Stephen Merrill October 2013

He writes:

Consider a few possibilities.

1. Snowden worked with journalists for quite a long time, even while working at Dell also as an NSA analyst. Snowden would have had the benefit of useful research and advice from many in that way.

If true, such a story will likely be confirmed sometime in the near future.

2. Snowden had the help or the direction of foreign governments, possibly the Chinese he targeted for cyber-attacks or the Russians his world travels later led him to embracing. Not needing funding to speak of, it is hard to see what great help foreign intelligence agencies would have been to Snowden: no more it seems than say connections with journalists. It certainly would be unlike the Chinese and the Russians to publish the work of a US double-agent in The Guardian and the New York Times. Even Dick Cheney seemed to be bashful about making this case.

3. Edward Snowden, in effect, is one of several or many NSA leakers working in concert for some time. He may not even be the true “deep throat” in this counter-espionage drama. Snowden just takes all of the credit and the downside too, the front man.

Keep in mind that the author there states that he served in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer. And I take him and his online publication Alaska Freedom News as highly Libertarian were he works as it's editor.

I take everything with a grain of salt.

Although, whatever shakes down through all of this, I hope I live long enough to read the actual scenario.

~OGD~

Which is to say, maybe they

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 02:47:52 +0000

In reply to The argument that U.S.

Which is to say, maybe they aren't overreacting, but responding reasonably to the threat they face.

In fact, reading your article about the German raid on mosques, there seems to be some genuine and well-founded concern about the activities of these groups. Explosive vests for one.

Anyway, I'm happy to allow

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 02:39:25 +0000

In reply to I'm sorry. You can't compare

Anyway, I'm happy to allow that other countries are concerned with terrorism and have taken measures against it. As you note, many other countries have taken much more draconian measures internally than we have.

I'm not sure the point was ever that we, or anyone, should be blasé about terrorism and just "take it" without responding (resilience isn't that). It had more to do (at least EYE would say) with the level of the response, its fecklessness, the damage it has caused to other countries, the money we've spent on it, the lives we've lost and maimed, and now drones and kill lists and so on.

These two wars have been a spasm of revenge more than a sensible response to the terrorist threat. Unfortunately, GWB was able to channel the shock and anger provoked by 911 into fairly broad support (at least for a good number of years) for an enormously destructive, nonsensical military adventure in other countries.

Instead of directing the shock and anger in productive ways and leading us in clear thinking about how to understand the terrorist threat and defend against it, he whipped it all into a foamier froth, doused it in cheap whiskey, and set flame to it.

In short, we overreacted.

So to pose a counterfactual in a general way: If GWB had been a leader, we might have had an effective and reasonable approach to counter-terrorism instead of what we got and are still getting.

So, just to change gears, it's often said that the NSA programs, constitutional or not, have been ineffective at foiling terrorist attacks. They can't point to any real examples, and they missed the Boston Bombing completely.

I wonder whether the French or German much more draconian measures have proven more effective. Do you know?

I'm sorry. You can't compare

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 02:15:15 +0000

In reply to Of course most weren't with

I'm sorry. You can't compare the scale of the US effort in Afghanistan and Iraq to any of these others. And, as a consequence, you can't compare the level of damage done. Or the level of "freak out" that spawned these two decade-long wars.

The French now have about 2,000 troops in CAR. We occupied ALL of Iraq for all of GWB's presidency, 8 years and then some with our entire military. We went in with all five legs.

It doesn't matter to this argument whether most were with us or not. When we were first attacked, virtually the whole world was with us and most, as I recall, were basically with us in the early days of the Afghanistan invasion.

We started losing a lot of support after that...

Of course most weren't with

artappraiser — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 19:14:18 +0000

In reply to I'm not sure I was

Of course most weren't with us on Iraq, that's because it was stupid. But that doesn't mean everyone else is against intervention elsewhere for terrorism prevention purposes! People forget that it was a NATO based coalition in Afghanistan, not just the U.S. France just did Ivory Coast, Mali and now C.A.R. The E.U. led the way with Libya. Everybody's been trying to intervene in Somalia since forever. I'm sure that even right at this moment Russian intel would be happy to share with the C.I.A. anything they have on any possible Chechen drone target of the U.S. in northwest Pakistan. Don't kid yourself, there aren't many first, or even second world governments that worry too much about national sovereignity issues where international terrorism is concerned.

Sorry...china shop.

Anonymous PS — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 18:42:26 +0000

In reply to I'm not sure I was

Sorry...china shop.

I'm not sure I was

Anonymous PS — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 18:41:24 +0000

In reply to I wasn't arguing with you, I

I'm not sure I was particularly aware of this argument, and it wasn't what I was saying, but I'll follow you there...

If I were to put myself into the argument you reference, I'd note that the US also had a habit of overreacting by invading countries for ten or so years, deposing governments, killing lots of folks and, afterwards, droning them from afar. And claiming all kinds of bogus provocation for doing so, etc., etc.

I imagine this fed into the left's judgment against the US. If we'd simply been swooping up data a la the NSA, I'm not sure the outcry would've been as great. Some, to be sure, but the retort that the swooping and scooping were all done in the name of defense and not offense would probably have been more compelling.

Now, you could argue that the other countries would've done what we did had they been able to. And they did join us in pretty small numbers comparatively. But still, we're the biggest bull in the China shop, and our freak outs and overreactions cost the world (and us) more than other countries' freak outs and overreactions.

I wasn't arguing with you, I

artappraiser — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:53:35 +0000

In reply to The argument that U.S.

I wasn't arguing with you, I was suggesting that I think the premise of that particular very common argument (which I have been seeing in the left-of-center blogosphere since the Bush years) is false and you might rethink on that point. That's why I selected out a quote and responded only to it. Don't know about others, but when I select out a quote and respond to it, I am responding only to that point, offering input only on that point. If you don't like me doing that, I guess you could say "what about the rest of my argument?" And I guess I could reply that I am not interested in getting into it. But I think it should be pretty clear, because I selected out that point.

Yes, of course, arguing that we should be better than most other countries is a different thing.

Not often I agree with what

Lurker — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:42:59 +0000

In reply to How to Break Up the CIA

Not often I agree with what appears here, but this time you've done it right. The CIA's been out of control for a long time. There were attempts to rein it in after the revelations of the '60's, but those restraints were used as the excuse for why they didn't stop 9-11, and were subsequently lifted. Bush had a good chance to reform the place, because of its manifest gross incompetence (it took scores of terrorists many months of work in several countries to get it together, but the CIA missed it all), but instead he gave a medal to the Director. I guess they had something on him.

I'm pessimistic about your chances of reforming the place, though.

The argument that U.S.

Anonymous PS — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:23:30 +0000

In reply to The argument that U.S.

The argument that U.S. overreacted much more than other countries have who have suffered longer with terrorism.

One could make the argument, of course, that countries who've suffered longer with terrorism have a greater reason to "overreact." Which is to say, maybe they aren't overreacting, but responding reasonably to the threat they face. A threat that has proved itself to be real time and time again.

During this whole NSA thing, one of the things I've heard constantly, here and elsewhere, and mostly from the left (and libertarians) is: These measures aren't necessary, and the proof of this is, they haven't foiled a single terrorist plot. Moreover, they failed to foil the Boston Bomber attack which was sort of handed to them on a silver platter by Russia. So let's ditch 'em.

My question has been: Do we know what the threat is (or if it is)? Until we get a handle on the threat, it's hard to answer these questions, IMO. Fear is the great destabilizer because it generates its own rationale for being and acting in certain ways. Like carrying a gun all the time.