Tag: CIA

How Stupid Can We Be? commentary on common sense

About Me, Commentary, This and That

uh…what a loaded question is that!

In the past half hour, tops, I began to wonder anew…how stupid could Stupid Be?   I turned on CNN fully expecting to get some clues to that question, and I was not disappointed.  (No dig at CNN…the competition is much worse.)

One– American fighter pilots have been told to ignore “aggressive” Russian pilots over in Syria.  Actually, I thought they had been instructed to avoid each other.   Just as an aside, has anyone else recently become of the opinion that Washington, the U.S. military…maybe even the Russians…and especially the news media led by internet news are almost giddy at the prospect of renewed Cold War hostilities?

I have seen Top Gun numerous times, it’s one of my favorites, and I saw those bad boys making obscene gestures to other fighter pilots…while flying upside down, no less!

Since the Iron Curtain lifted in 1990, an entire generation has missed out on the Cold War daily horror…may we say terror…heaped upon the American public.   I have written elsewhere about this era of watching anxiously for the world to explode.  https://mumbletymuse.com/2015/03/21/the-decade-194…my-life-part-3/      this post is written pertaining to my experiences as a child living in the shadow of Nuclear Bombs.

Two, the news is presenting shocking reports that hackers have invaded the files of the heads of the CIA and Homeland Security!   WHAT? is no one’s email or private secret records sacred? Furthermore, the alleged hacker has SPOKEN to CNN.  Good grief…  One would think that the secret service agencies could locate the hacker…maybe even recruit him to work for us.  Don’t they watch cable news?

And Three… DRONES.   CNN reported that there are now a MILLION drones in use by the private sector.  Flying around in air traffic lanes, scaring military pilots who are minding their own business…and they have managed to approach critical facilities like…almost…the White House!    And—there is no regulation or registration, or anything.   Just go in, pick out your drone, and send its on its merry way doing gosh-knows-what.  Law enforcement agencies like the police have been able to apprehend drones which have crashed or otherwise fallen into official hands–but they just have the DRONES, which remain anonymous.  If ya ask me, anything that resembles an electronic mosquito should be closely monitored by the Feds.

So that was it for the six o’clock news.   Rather amazing, I think.

Killing the Messenger…or, What Would Jack Bauer Do? (reposted commentary)

Commentary, In the News, politics, Sometimes re-runs, This and That, TV & Hollywood, Writing and Blogging

[Fast-forward three years— its 2018, and we in the blogger world and general news-junky fellowship are on the brink of yet another Trump-Era scandal of true Alice-in-Wonderland proportions.       The new CIA Director, who was appointed just a few hours ago— Gina Haspel, was promoted in the wake of new firings by the President.    She faces grueling confirmation examination before assuming the Director’s chair.      Ms. Haspel, a thirty year veteran of the CIA, has some baggage left over from the Bush-era torture scandals hearings, conducted during the Obama-administration.

Here is a post I wrote at the time, and in view of the tempest that is about to surface over Ms. Haspel’s significant role in the supervision of the torture hearings by congress, featuring the water-boarding and other techniques used against U.S. prisoners.

Jack Bauer, for those of us who were on Mars during the years that the excellent and suspenseful TV series called “24” was aired.   The Jack Bauer character was played by Keifer Sutherland, who now plays the role of the U.S. President on the TV series “Designated Survivor.”]

……………..

KILLING THE MESSENGER…OR, WHAT WOULD JACK BAUER DO?
(Re-posted from Sometimes, 2015.)

Sometimes, 2015.

Often the” tattle-tale” gets in more trouble than the actual culprit.  The kid that breaks the vase while showing off baseball prowess  in the living room gets less flack than the sibling who tells on him.    The gang-banger who reports a robbery to police will be permanently ostracized by peers, while the robber gets off with a slap on the wrist.  This is one of the truisms of childhood, and  honor-among-thieves is often admired, at least secretly.

So in the current news circus–particularly the round-the-clock “spinning of yarns” news channel CNN–the cry of “kill the messenger” screeched onto the television screens immediately upon the bomb-shell reading of the Senate report on the use of torture by the CIA following the attack on the World Trade Center on 9-11.

We may have been softened up or prepared for the report by the fictitious Jack Bauer. of 24 fame…who was on the television series the primary “interrogator” of enemies, and when he was forced to resort to torture techniques he “reluctantly” rose to the occasion and performed his talents for the good of the agency.   Unfortunately, sometimes the people Jack Bauer was forced to torture were not always guilty of anything.  Darn!  Jack always felt appropriately bad when that happened.

So now there are the inevitable cries of “political propaganda,”  and a scramble to soft-peddle or excuse terrible occurrences that we, as a nation under God, are not supposed to do.  Shock and awe!

Hopefully the fall-out of this revelation of disaster will reach back into the time of the Central American wars…Nicaragua and El Salvador, and throughout South America.   Iran-Contra is a good place to start.  As a historian of Latin American History, the familiarities of our government involvement “down there” are understood.  Of course then it was the Soviet Union that was the big enemy and any illicit activity was excused by Washington as “anti-Communism.”

The same loud voices against the “tattle-tales” who are revealing the information about torture in the new Senate report are from those who would be in the front lines denouncing such atrocities committed by leaders in other countries.

Killing the messenger is not productive.  Sometimes telling the public what is really going on in our name is not anti-American or political propaganda–it’s just the right thing to do.