The CIA: beyond redemption and should be terminated

Snippet of a long article from July 24th, 2010 on a website called "Veteran's Today". To read the rest of the article, follow the link provided.

THE CIA: BEYOND REDEMPTION AND SHOULD BE TERMINATED
www.veteranstoday.com...

The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) has confirmed the worst fears of its creator President Harry Truman that it might degenerate into “an American Gestapo.” It has been just that for so long it is beyond redemption. It represents 60 years of failure and fascism utterly at odds with the spirit of a democracy and needs to be closed, permanently.

Over the years “the Agency” as it is known, has given U.S. presidents so much wrong information on so many critical issues, broken so many laws, subverted so many elections, overthrown so many governments, funded so many dictators, and killed and tortured so many innocent human beings that the pages of its official history could be written in blood, not ink. People the world over regard it as infamous, and that evaluation, sadly for the reputation of America, is largely accurate. Besides, since President Obama has half a dozen other major intelligence agencies to rely on for guidance, why does he need the CIA? In one swoop he could lop an estimated 27,000 employees off the Federal payroll, save taxpayers umpteen billions, and wipe the CIA stain from the American flag.

If you think this is a “radical” idea, think again. What is “radical” is to empower a mob of covert operatives to roam the planet, wreaking havoc as they go with not a care for morality or, for that matter, the tenets of mercy implicit in any of the great faiths. The idea of not prosecuting CIA interrogators (i.e., torturers), as President Obama has said, is chilling. These crimes have to be stopped somewhere, sometime, or they will occur again.

“The CIA had run secret interrogation centers before—beginning in 1950, in Germany, Japan, and Panama,” writes New York Times reporter Tim Weiner in his book “Legacy of Ashes, The History of The CIA”(Random House). Weiner has won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the intelligence community. “It had participated in the torture of captured enemy combatants before—beginning in 1967, under the Phoenix program in Vietnam. It had kidnapped suspected terrorists and assassins before…”

MUCH MORE IN HERE - CUT FOR BREVITY

It will be worse than unfortunate if President Obama continues the inhumane (and illegal) CIA renditions that President Bill Clinton began and President Bush vastly expanded. If the White House thinks its operatives can roam the world and arrest and torture any person it chooses without a court order, without due process, and without answering for their crimes, this signifies Americans believe themselves to be a Master Race better than others and above international law. That’s not much different from the philosophy that motivated Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. It would be the supreme irony if the American electorate that repudiated racism last November has voted into its highest office a constitutional lawyer who reaffirms his predecessor’s illegal views on this activity. Renditions must be stopped. The CIA must be abolished.

Mod Edit: All Caps – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 8/1/2010 by semperfortis]

Outstanding. Good post.

I agree that the CIA is beyond repair. It was never in repair to begin with. It was formed from former Nazi's. What else do you expect other than fascism?

Where does the CIA start and stop and where do other operations and organizations take over? I don't believe anyone knows the depth and breadth of all CIA operations.

It's pretty compartmentalized, and I'm sure there are things that even those at the highest levels are unaware of the big picture.
Because of this, knowing whether the CIA is beyond redemption or not or should be terminated would be based on nothing but speculation and theory. There are things we think we know but probably many more we don't.

Even operatives, agents, analysts, and officers who leave the service are typically only aware of the specific things they were privy to on a need-to-know basis. And being surrounded by questions and mystery and having people think about and speculate that they know exactly what the CIA does and how, when, where, and why they do it is the nature of the beast.

If they were to be "terminated" who do you suggest would and could perform many of the critical functions they do?

AGREED! EVer since watching George Tenet sitting smugly in the UN while the US presented it's case for "saddam's chemical weapons" as a cause for war I have thought they were beyond their usefulness. To the American people of course, not however to the multinational corporations and bankers that give them their marching orders though.
The CIA is a cold war relic and a symbol of American evils. To destroy it would save us a good deal of money and grief. Their intelligence is dubious at best and their actions unconscionable. Time to go!

Hmmm, but who's gonna move all the drugs around the world?