The CIA in present international politics

wolf, The angle of the shot cannot be determined unless the target is stationary and/or the shot is close enough not to change the angle of the shot. It's almost impossible to determine who shot JFK. Many propositions have been made, but they are all guesses at best. c.i.

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Here's my take on it; whoever shot JR also shot JFK. c.i.

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wolf wrote:

Quote:
Trot out your evidence.

I would be obliged to do so if you give me a list of the administrations's evidence that L.H. Oswald killed JFK and that bin Laden was behind 9/11. Not the government's sworn statements, but evidence please. Shouldn't be so hard as it seems to be the accepted truth. I'm asking you seazoned forumers politely: enlighten my young mind with the facts.

Wolf, your request for evidence for the JFK assasination, betrays either great ignorance of the ample, readily available, and well-documented history of this unhappy event, or a persistent refusal to read, absorb, think and make reasonable conclusions. I cant decide which it is, but I can assure you that your problem cannot be corrected by posting a few links on this thread.

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You can not ask me to trot out my evidence and then make this into a ranting fest when I do.

The links I provide are carefully chosen. Any crackpot can publish anything, any crackpot can lead any criminal investigation, hell, any crackpot can make its way into the White House. The internet is just a medium as is paper or that damned tv screen you probably stare too long at. What counts is the validity of the testimony, the background facts, the expert opinion, and the seriousness of the journalistic source. Necessities which 90% of the articles on the link above are assured of.

I believe America let's its pride stand in the way of objective reasoning. There are political scandals all over the world. You are not alone. But you can and may not neglect that JFK and 9/11 were followed by totally bogus investigations.

America is a great empire, but it will collapse by the lack of scrupules if it doesn't carefully maintain its democratic origins (not the party - the system).

Best regards.

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Let's try on something a bit more sinister from today's headlines, some things that tie in to the discussion you boys are having. Excerpt from Richard Reeves' essay follows, link at bottom:

"To date we have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of al-Qaida. ... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

GWB, SOTU address, 1/28/03

In other words, Americans are out there murdering "suspected" terrorists. And the president smirked and almost wink-winked with pleasure.

He was bragging about American assassinations.

I wrote a book once about a president who was assassinated, John F. Kennedy. I am often asked if I have a theory about his murder. And I do. In those days, the U.S. government, at the highest level, was in the assassination business. Fidel Castro was the most obvious target, but there were others. Sudden political murder was in the air. In that environment, Lee Harvey Oswald was among those, including an organization called Fair Play for Cuba, who were frantically talking of American plots.

However it began, it ended when our president was the one gunned down. And when you think of it, the president of a free country is at much more risk than dictators in police states.

There is also the question of superpower. When you have the weapons and capabilities that the United States has, it is stupid to reduce war and threat to one man with a rifle. Assassination is the weapon of the weak; it is a very dangerous business and ultimately a foolish one for the free and the strong.

A FOOLISH PRESIDENT BRAGS ABOUT ASSASSINATION

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Out of Bush's verbal drone that was taxing my attention span, I did pick up on that reference to assasinations, PDiddie. I wonder when that will filter over to our internal justice -- policemen as judge and jury. Can we hope that there is oversight and the evidence that any covert elimination of suspected terrorists (the CIA may not be not subject to our internal laws in these cases but they are subject to international laws)? Many people I believe don't want to know. Some are shouting out the right to life mantra but are extremely selective as to how that is applied.

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PDiddie wrote:

"To date we have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of al-Qaida. ... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

GWB, SOTU address, 1/28/03

In other words, Americans are out there murdering "suspected" terrorists. And the president smirked and almost wink-winked with pleasure.

He was bragging about American assassinations.

1) No where did Bush claim that Americans are the ones responsible for bringing these thugs to this other fate. It is quite obvious that many are being dealt with by forces of other sovereign nations. (Though I suspect you blame Bush for their actions as well.)

2) No where did Bush claim that those who met this "other fate" were sitting quietly with their hands folded and got a bullet in the back of the head. Many were killed resisting capture by forces of other governments.

3) No where did Bush claim that he was referring only to terrorists outside the Afghanistan conflict. Many terrorists and their supporters met this other fate there during open military combat; not by an assassin's hand.

Your source and your interpretation take a broad statement, match it up with no facts, and then assert the worst possible conclusion. Is the US using assassination as a tool in this war in some cases? Probably. Is it warranted where used? I hope so. Does its use likely limit collateral casualties? Probably. Would I prefer none of this were necessary? Absolutely.

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Well Said, Tress. I was composing a post, but my reamarks would have added nothing to the sentiment you expressed.

Helluva waste of typing, though. Oh, well ... that happens to me a lot Mr. Green

timber

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Then why didn't Bush say what he meant instead of using an insinuation? Very poor speech writing.

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Is it the writing or the reading? Wink

c.i.

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LW, you know politicians ... often, the last thing one of that sort ever wants to do is to nail themself to a statement. If that were not so, there would be absolutely no need for an entire branch of journalism: Political Commentary and Analysis. Diplomats would face an employment crisis, too.

timber

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Should'a figured that out from GWBushies SOTU speech. But to go one step further, it was all gobli-gook from the get-go. c.i.

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I just found it to be an euphemism that is cheaper by the dozen,
especially with the unintended (?) salesman's snicker attached to it.

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A portion of this thread was split to here: http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3716

I had done my best to get the split right. However, complicated topics sometimes do not lend themselves to perfect splitting and, unfortunately, I am unable to reunite split topics.

Thank you.

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I happen to believe that an effective intelligence apparatus would be a good thing to have.

Unfortunately, there are too many competing, quarrelling, competitive bureaucrats for it to be effective.

Which is also complicated by the administration's apparent subverting and inventing of the truth to fit certain circumstances, at least in this case:

The Bush administration's efforts to build a case for war against Iraq using intelligence to link it to Al Qaeda and the development of prohibited weapons has created friction within United States intelligence agencies, government officials said.

Some analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said.

New York Times

It isn't just the fact that they're lying, it's also that they're shifting resources to try and prove that the square peg really does go into the round hole instead of actually trying to track down real terrorists.

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Pdiddie, you're a courageous American.

another red flag just came up:

http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/du/Qiraq-kurds-us.Rzn2_DF1.html

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wolf, that little item is just another nail in the coffin for the reputation of the CIA. It's dislocation from other branches of the government, especially the State Department and the diplomats in foreign countries as nearly made it into another branch of the governement. I don't believe the forefathers would like the idea of a covert, mischievous, unregulated fourth branch of government.
I'm not saying the espionage isn't necessary to protect the security of the country, I'm saying it's been mishandled from administration to administration since it's inception in World War II. They've definetely been guilty of a lot of misdirected endeavors which have been more than adequatly documented and I don't see it changing under the new bureaucracy.

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PDiddie wrote:

Some analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said.

While I am always skeptical of information coming out of the government, I am wondering which I should give more weight--statements made by unidentified sources or statements made by specific, named individuals.

While I don't think there's a blanket rule that can be applied here, I don't automatically assume that these unnamed sources are telling the truth anymore than I assume named sources are.

Yet it seems that the standard some people set for which source they believe is which source agrees with what they already choose to believe. (This statement is not directed at any specific person here in A2K.)

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Wolf, your red flag is being waved by an individual of suspect objectivity ... as a leader of an Extremist Fundamentalist Islamic Group, Kurdish or not, might be expected to have issue with and to be in opposition to US interests.

None of that, however, mitigates against the need for a complete restructuring of US Intelligence Capabilities and Assets.

timber.

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tres, Your observation agrees with mine; I remain very skeptical of any information that is publicized no matter what the source. However, having said that, I seem to give more credence to sources that seem to have a better track record at "truth." Those that have been confirmed after the fact. c.i.

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The CIA in present international politics

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