We have to be ready to pay the price of Bushist hubris. We played fast and loose with our own laws, and now we have to accept that we cannot prosecute detainees that might have been convictable if we’d followed our own rules. I’m more afraid of the collapse of law in this country than I am of a few Arabs and Uighurs whose names and faces are known. If and when one of them commits provable crimes, try him and punish him. Otherwise, forget it.

But here is one serious thought (not heavy, but serious): I don’t think it makes sense to divide our characterization of the CIA into either criminal or incompetent. It’s both of these, some of the time, i.e., not all of the time. The criminality stems from its service to a hegemonic foreign policy and the fact they have been allowed to operate in secret, bringing out all the worst traits in human nature, and anathema to good organizational standards.

The latter is one major reason they are often inept: responsibility is not delegated, and accountability isn’t structured as in a normal institution (operating under decent organizational norms). As a result, corruption in all its sundry forms has crept in over the decades, culminating in the CIA contractors fiasco. We have yet, as this scandal unfolds, to touch upon the smarmy and violent milieu out of which Mitchell and Jessen arose.

The final problem is structural, as the CIA has two primary tasks: intelligence analysis and covert operations. The two are not compatible, and the former has suffered at the hands of the latter over the years, especially financially. To some degree, the same problems have infected other U.S. intelligence agencies, although I really only have the NSA in mind as I type this.

So, the CIA is neither criminal or inept. But it has engaged in multiple, terrible crimes, and has shown tremendous incompetence on numerous occasions. We must go after each, respectively. I do think, though, that the CIA is an organizational nightmare, and that its secret function, in particular covert action, is incompatible with an open society or a democracy.

Especially combined with false outrage on the part of the torture-supporters, and this sense–just heard a journalist throw this out matter-of-factly on KCRW’s To the Point the other day–that Dems have no stomach for a truth commission (and the Pelosi kerfufflers know it full well).

WTF?!? We’re talking about enormously important history here. It just seems impossible that so much of this critical information could’ve just been destroyed. And exponentially more impossible that HAYDEN and this JOSE ROGRIGUEZ guy (just as a start) could walk away unscathed from such criminal ratf**kery, not against Democrats (as with Watergate), but against ‘democracy’ per se…a self-governing populace’s right to know, EVEN IN HINDSIGHT, the historical record of what the hell went on in our names and on our dimes.

It’s so infuriating! And add in Monday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling shielding these villains from lawsuits…that is, unless plaintiffs

“somehow ha[ve] gotten his/her hands on evidence that shows that the high officials were *specifically* involved in the planning and approval of the abuse.”

[rimshot]

It’s just unbearable…what would be a working person’s version of “going Galt”? I’m…..’going Kadzinsky’ comes to mind but christ…that’s a little much…well, now Dylan’s ‘You Aint Going Nowhere’ has popped into my head. …Sigh… Good song, actually…and the lyric

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don”

even has some relevance to the topic at hand. Odd.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01753.html>

However, I am serious when I keep stressing the incompetence v. willful destruction of evidence choice here. I think this needs to be pointed out repeatedly. Either the CIA is incompetent or they are corrupt/criminal. This of course begs the question of why we tolerate their existence. They do a lousy job and they break the law on a whim. Our country would be better served without them.

You and I both hold the view that the CIA is a lawless organization, but it doesn’t hurt to point out to the CIA’s defenders that if the CIA isn’t lawless, then it is certainly incompetent. Either way, it is an agency that serves no useful purpose and therefore should be disbanded.

1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Found

In the report, the Pentagon confirmed that two former Guantánamo prisoners whose terrorist activities had been previously reported had indeed returned to the fight. They are Said Ali al-Shihri, a leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch suspected in a deadly bombing of the United States embassy in Sana, Yemen’s capital, last year, and Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, an Afghan Taliban commander, who also goes by the name Mullah Abdullah Zakir.

fookin Obama released this guy LAST YEAR, an he returned to the battlefield

watch it happen …

Loosen them up with cocktails, a smoke or two, and they’re up for the good fight, though . . .

Good folks . . .*G*