Would you buy a used car from this man?Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.The article then notes that this "raises questions" about our current Afghanistan policy.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.
Well duh!!! The army fights the Taliban, which is supported to a large degree by opium money, and the CIA pays money to one of the biggest opium producers and smugglers in the region, which would imply that in some small part, the CIA is paying the Taliban to kill American troops.
Those boyz from Langley are such kidders.
Did the CIA ever carry out any operation that the American people would approve of? It seems that every CIA operation is either despicable or detrimental to the interests of the American people or, quite often, both. The entire agency should be simply eliminated.
ReplyDeleteActually, the CIA has conducted operations that Americans would approve of, most notably the surveillance of Soviet strategic capabilities during the cold war.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that its culture is broken.
It was founded by OSS guys who were used to parachuting agents into Germany in WWII, and when they tried to do the same in the USSR after WWII, it failed, because there were no conquered peoples to aid them, so they flipped out.
BTW, most of the crap they pulled, like overthrowing governments in latin America for the benefit of United Fruit Company, existed well before the CIA was created.
> Actually, the CIA has conducted operations that Americans would approve of, most notably the surveillance of Soviet strategic capabilities during the cold war.
ReplyDeleteIf a decades old surveillance operation (of little practical value, it seems to me) is the highest achievement the CIA can claim, then it is definitely the cause of much more harm than good.
> BTW, most of the crap they pulled, like overthrowing governments in latin America for the benefit of United Fruit Company, existed well before the CIA was created.
That's true, but that's no excuse for having a government agency which specializes in such activities.
I agree....The CIA needs to be fixed or replaced...Same goes for the FBI, which still suffers from the J. Edgar Hoover disease.
ReplyDeleteIts funny really that Ian Flemming (of James Bond fame) had a big hand in the development of what became the CIA.
ReplyDeleteThe problems in the CIA go back all the way to the 50's and the start of the first 'gap' issue. In this case the so called bomber gap. The CIA lost to the Air Force in that fight.
The CIA, primarily an analysis organisation, soon became involved in some of the more crazy schemes (Bay of Pigs to assassinations) proposed by its 'special ops' dept.
This is what happens when you decided to set up something to provide you with good information and then decide that this organisation should also mount operations. We can see now how the conflicts of interest within (and externally) the CIA has created a corrupt and rogue intelligence element.
There are fine CIA officers who have served with distinction and gave the ultimate sacrafice. Sadly it seems these sacrafices were futile as it seems we are still on a slippery slope to keeping vested interests (often it seems ones that are detrimental to the US and the world) in power.
sorry for the duplicate posts...I kept getting a 'not able to post as server is busy' error message.
ReplyDeleteGuess that was slightly incorrect! LOL
Fixed Vonners, no big.
ReplyDelete