Here's an unsettling story about old CIA interrogation techniques. I accept that when force is used the mistakes that accompany human endeavors turn deadly, and that governments are no smarter or more ethical than the individuals that make them up. But could our government at least refrain from making The Prisoner appear more factual than fictional?
Also, re the CIA: what's with these guys? I don't mean the torture or the illegalities or any of that, but the wackiness and the incompetence. I don't really know anything about the world of intelligence gathering, but the CIA's track record doesn't look very good. Though I guess the obvious response is, how would we know about the stuff they got right, or prevented? But, just from what information has leaked out or been declassified over the last fifty or sixty years, the CIA seems to enjoy a surplus of crazy in relation to other intelligence agencies.
Also, re the CIA: what's with these guys? I don't mean the torture or the illegalities or any of that, but the wackiness and the incompetence. I don't really know anything about the world of intelligence gathering, but the CIA's track record doesn't look very good. Though I guess the obvious response is, how would we know about the stuff they got right, or prevented? But, just from what information has leaked out or been declassified over the last fifty or sixty years, the CIA seems to enjoy a surplus of crazy in relation to other intelligence agencies.
3 Comments:
I want to work for the NSA, someday.
- brad
Teehee, you spelled "incompetence" wrong. You big silly! Irony get! :)
- Chelsea
Curses! And yet, after I finish this, I plan on correcting the mistake, and then what will history think?
Also, there was a nuance in that first part that I was trying to get at but might not have. Something more along the lines of Robert McNamara's bit in the film Fog of War, paraphrased: "Any military commander who is honest with you will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power." Or, in other words, that when you throw heavy things around you are going to break other things that ought not be broken, and that this always needs to be added to the balance when considering the use of force.
In this case, I'm suggesting (I guess) that I am resigned, in a wide sense (while opposed to actual instances thereof) to abuses of power existing, but not to the redefinition of abuse as the new, uh, nonabuse. As it were.
Chelsea, you should totally e-mail me.
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