So the U.S. drone strike killed innocent children..

[biomed1]

It is time to return to the original topic of this thread.
While your posts on who should be banned or remembering your favorite scene or line from the "Wizard of Oz" is fascinating.
They are not on topic.

#6 - Respect the topics presented by those who start a thread. Attempts to derail a thread or change it's direction is referred to as thread hijack and will be discouraged. Attempts to guide a thread in the right direction are appreciated, while responses to posts which hijack a thread are not.

[CryptKicker]

About time. Geesh

[Precious_b]

Originally Posted by biomed1

It is time to return to the original topic of this thread.
While your posts on who should be banned or remembering your favorite scene or line from the "Wizard of Oz" is fascinating.
They are not on topic.

Let me be the first to apologize.
I know the thread was started by ellen about drone strikes, kids and their deaths by such.
As much as I like a good discourse about politics, it seems others are blind to the actions of the POV they argue. I must have been too obtuse as posting the movie clip since a kid (and her little dog too) where the objects of such flying monkeys sent out by the wonderful Margaret Hamilton and the object of attention was retrieved (Dorothy) along with the collateral damage (traveling companions.)
In short:
Drones == Flying Monkeys
Kids == Tin Man and Scarecrow (though adults, minds of childen)
ISIS == Dorothy

And when sending such drones, people always liken to hitting the button/key on keyboard. Mrs Hamilton being drone operator.

Sorry for not being direct.

[pussycat]

It is estimated that over 90 percent of people killed with the CIA's drones were innocent people, misidentified or whatever. This is because instead of using old fashioned means of killing at close range like in my father's days the CIA today uses defective technologies. Obama is to blame for all this of course, and on "Tyrant Tuesdays" he met every week with John Brennan (who voted for the communist candidate for President in 1976 and then became the Director of CIA) to approve that week's list of people to be assassinated with drones. Obama will go down in his-tray (as he pronounces it with his fake southern a la MLK dialect) as the most venal and fake individuals to every be President. Today he surrounds himself exclusively with celebrities in his 20 million dollars homes in Palm Springs for the winter and Martha's Vineyard for the summer months. He never set foot again in Chicago, the dreary place where he called home previously to assemble his corrupt political career. The CIA had it's faults in the Cold War, but thereafter it became a monster and should have been dissolved. Everything they've done in the War on Terror has been in error. They've not done a single thing right. All of this should have been left to the FBI and the Defense Dept.

[Precious_b]

PC, when they stopped relying on people in the field, the mistakes started to increase. And when POTUS has that meeting you are talking about every week, he has to rely on the people giving him the data. We don't have a perfect system but I will accept how it is currently done in these meetings with the change being to put people back on the ground. At least Obama signed off on them and accepted responsibility for such. Previous admin had a severe problem with accepting responsibility for any failures.

[pussycat]

None of Obama's progressive supporters ever criticized him for these atrocities, or his continuation of unconstitutional bulk data collection, or prosecution of whistle blowers or any of the other outrages anyone else would have been skewered for doing by the Left.

I have an uncle who was a CIA officer but quit after his best friend, another officer, was assassinated after he was outed by a magazine. I like to think I know something about the topic. I think they made many mistakes in the Cold War, but after the Cold War was over no one stayed there except losers, and those are the clowns who were around when the War on Terror happened. They fucked up the interrogations the FBI successfully started by playing at torture games when they didn't know how to conduct them. Then they screwed up the assassination mission.

[Precious_b]

I never understood the fast-n-furious bit and Obama lack of commenting on it. Seems a fucked up project. But plenty of collateral damage responsible from all parties that were in the White House. With 9/1l, if there ever was a green light to gather ANYTHING intelligence wise in this country, that was it. Guess it went to peoples head. Remember Bushes buddy Alberto Gonzales tried to go behind attorney generals office by going to the hospital and trying to get Ashcroft to sign off on the warantless wiretaps. That was a dirty ass move and I commend Ashcroft for telling off that pos.

Can't say I know the inside history of the CIA or read any books about it. Closest thing was that my father did work on NSA stuff and he never talked about his job. I just know you are not suppose to expose a CIA agent like was done to Valerie Plame just because her husband wouldn't stay quite about Iraq not getting Uranium from Africa (so as to use that as a reason amongst others to go into Iraq.) And I can't wait for the Solange guy to be extradited. There is one thing reporting newsworthy stuff. Quite the opposite when you break the law in getting that stuff. That is why they have others bring it to journalist so as they can at least keep from getting dirty retreiving the stuff.

[pussycat]

Originally Posted by Precious_b

I never understood the fast-n-furious bit and Obama lack of commenting on it. Seems a fucked up project. But plenty of collateral damage responsible from all parties that were in the White House. With 9/1l, if there ever was a green light to gather ANYTHING intelligence wise in this country, that was it. Guess it went to peoples head. Remember Bushes buddy Alberto Gonzales tried to go behind attorney generals office by going to the hospital and trying to get Ashcroft to sign off on the warantless wiretaps. That was a dirty ass move and I commend Ashcroft for telling off that pos.

Can't say I know the inside history of the CIA or read any books about it. Closest thing was that my father did work on NSA stuff and he never talked about his job. I just know you are not suppose to expose a CIA agent like was done to Valerie Plame just because her husband wouldn't stay quite about Iraq not getting Uranium from Africa (so as to use that as a reason amongst others to go into Iraq.) And I can't wait for the Solange guy to be extradited. There is one thing reporting newsworthy stuff. Quite the opposite when you break the law in getting that stuff. That is why they have others bring it to journalist so as they can at least keep from getting dirty retreiving the stuff.

My uncle's friend was killed in Athens, and I think his name was published in Ramparts, or some other far Left American rag. His wife made him find another career after that. That was in the late 1970s when CIA was under attack from all sides domestically anyway, and the old guard who were there from the 1950s like James Angleton were gone. Then when Carter came in 1977 many remaining senior operators were forced out.

People think that CIA was about assassination, but I believe that was not true. Only the counter-intelligence Division under Angleton maintained a facility for assassination, and it was used to kill people spying for the enemy. Other than that no Department of CIA had any assassins on staff, Everytime they considered it they had to try to piece something together ad hoc because they were not in that business, and usually those plans failed.

All that changed with 9-11. After that for the first time CIA got into the assassination business in a huge way. They competed with DoD for that mission. Army with Delta, Navy with SEALS, performed "Special Access" missions. And CIA had their drone program. That was the menu of killing assets the President has...still has. But the CIA is the only agency of the three with a 90 percent miss record. Would I tell someone to join CIA today? Hell no.

[Precious_b]

You can say that the CIA was always in the assassination via those weekly reports they give the potus. Of course it would be the chiefs choice of implementation if a go.

One customer of mine who just recently got out of the NSA told it succintly to me, when it came to spying on people here as opposed to abroad: we aren't here to spy on Americans unless they are part of a terrorist group. Don't care if cheating on taxes, etc. Filter that stuff out.

But the intelligence community has killed itself by not having people in the field. If someone said high tech could replace a person, they did a great disservice to this country.

[pussycat]

People in the field is Human Intelligence, and it was available to us in the Cold War because the conflict was ideological, communism versus non-communism, so in Russia (as closed of a society as it was) we could find passionate anti-communists willing to risk their lives to help us. Similarly, the Russians found passionate communists in England and other allied countries to spy for them. In America they found cynical Americans who sold information for money. The problem with the War on Terror is that the enemy are all religious people and they believe that their side works for the will of God. If they betrayed God they will go to Hell. If they work with God they will go to paradise. This level of commitment goes far beyond politics like the ideological struggles of the 20th century. It harkens back to the religious wars of the Reformation, or in England and France where Catholics burned Protestants at the stake, and then the Protestants turned around and did the same or worse to the Catholics. It is conflict on another level. We will get no spies among them. All we can do is get some weak ones who hang around their training camps because they have nothing else to do with their lives and if we capture them we can talk to them and they usually cooperate if we show them that we are nice people and not the monsters they were told we are. But then that plan failed when the CIA came in with torturers to do the interrogations and the prisoners believed that we were in fact the tools of Satin and then they didn't want to cooperate anymore.

Take the case of that kid from San Francisco, John Walker Lindh. He becomes a devote muslim and moves to Afghanistan well before the US invaded the place, well before 9-11. Then he finds himself among the Talibs running the country when they are savagely attacked by America because they won't hand over Saddam Hussein. He's in a group of other Talibs who are captured by a War Lord the Americans like, and they are all in this dungeon waiting to be killed by the War Lord. Then some Jack Off CIA idiot named Mike Spann pulls him out of the group of condemned Talibs and starts mistreating him. He ties his arms behind his back at the elbows, plops him down on the ground and starts pushing him around and generally acting like an asshole in front of everybody. This does nothing to give Mr. Lindh the impression that America is a virtuous power or Americans nice people whatsoever. Then suddenly someone kills Spann and the condemned Talibs fight their way out of the dungeon and a battle ensues. Mr.Lindh is captured by the Americans, and they tie him to a stretcher board and urinate on him, then they write obcenities on him with lipstick. They mistreat and humiliate him in every way they can think of, and of course the Geneva Convention is long forgotten by now. Months of this kind of treatment and he's finally taken to an American Court and is convicted for fighting against the US, when it was the US who attacked his adopted country not the other was around! All this only further instilled in him his belief that America is an evil country (and he might have a point). His faith in Islam grew while in prison consequently. Today he is a devote muslim and always will be because the only side of America he's seen in the War on Terror is the most evil side.

Under Bush and Obama the NSA was looking at every American's emails and texts, call data, without warrants, for links to terror.

After Snowden that ended. Now to access American's data NSA must get a warrant.

However NSA does not need a warrant to access data of nom=Americans, and every text, email, call, made by people outside of the US can be seen with no warrant. So if you are a lawyer in France, or a banker in Switzerland, or a politician in Germany.......watch what you say all the time because you are being watched by the American Overlord.