FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES... CIA AGENT BLAMES BLOGGERS FOR PUTTING PANETTA IN THE CIA.
John Brennan—the initial candidate for C.I.A.director—was pressured to withdraw. Critics accused Brennan, who had been a top agency official during the Bush years, of complicity with the torture program. (A friend of Brennan’s from his C.I.A. days complained to me, “After a few Cheeto-eating people in the basement working in their underwear who write blogs voiced objections to Brennan, the Obama Administration pulled his name at the first sign of smoke, and then ruled out a whole class of people: anyone who had been at the agency during the past ten years couldn’t pass the blogger test.”)
This is interesting to me... the peceptions of people toward internet writers. Could there be a wider gap between generations? In thirty years, people will not look at the technology involved in getting out a writers message as meaningful at all. Bloggers, the average citizens who are using the internet to participate in a political system that largely ignores their concerns, are the saviors of this country... not the destroyers.
People of course fear what they do not understand. For most of recorded time, the media and religions and culture were controlled by a few people with the most power. Noam Chomsky used to write that the news was controlled by people who were wealthy enough to afford a few million for a printing press, and they would always emphasize their own concerns over others.
Now, we have these bloggers.... who the CIA operative describes as Cheeto Eaters. When did eating Cheetos become the mark of a fool, anyways? I have problems with anyone who is recklessly liberal with their criticism of any form of cheese, let alone the much beloved and democratic Cheeto. I guess I should not be surprised to once more find myself on the other side of the ideological divide from a secrecy cloacked governmnet organization. Cheese was once a sacred Common Ground for all people... oh, well.
I think this CIA operative over estimates the Obama/internet connection. I mean, the president had his beliefs long before bloggers came along and said, "Hey, this guy seems to represent me." Bloggers did not force Obama to distance himself from people who were involved in the Bush Regime's Crimes. Or maybe we did.... it would be a nice thought that people could have a say on such an important matter as the head of the CIA. That alone would be a true revolution.
The CIA is generally considered the presidents private army. The one that doesn't need little bothers like congressional oversite to act, just a president who is willing to trample anyone's civil rights...
I am very sympathetic toward actual people who work in Intelligence. I think it is crazy to think that if Bush told the CIA to do 'whatever it takes' to attack their percieved enemies, that we should now use 20/20 hindsight to say that they should have just refused to go along. These people are locked into security oaths that will destroy them if they break their secrecy vows. We ask our soldiers to follow orders from their superrior at the threat of jail or death. Then, we tell them that they should have revolted? There is no logic in this.
I am with Obama on the one point, I surely do not want to see a witch hunt that just fucks up our intelligence agencies and feels more like revenge than justice. The CIA needs to quit worrying so much about covering their asses, and start wondering why they feel like they have to all the time. I don't think the secrecy is good for anyone -- not spies, not governments, sure as hell not the Geneva Convention Rights of people our soldiers are battling (who we carefully refuse to call soldiers, so they can remain in the black hole of justice -- defined as enemy combatants, which pretty much means people who you can do whatever to).
I surely am puzzled by the spies as much as anyone else. I also read today that the public doesn't care much about NSA domestic spying. This was interesting -- because people are not interested, nothing is getting reformed on this issue. That is really pathetic, though it could point to something else the 'cheeto eating bloggers in thier underwear' need to wake and bake and ponder for a few words. Like I always say, if the government isn't watching you, you aren't writing hard enough. Well, actually I think the phrase is a little tidier than that.... what I actually say. This is more correctly what I always mean.
Paranoid people actually are right at home in this New World Order. Finally, the world has caught up to their twisted visions.
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