The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

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The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Forty Two » Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:51 pm

I mean since when did the CIA, the FBI and the NSA become the good guys? To all purposes, they’ve always been the instruments of the “deep state” and destroyers of democracy. They have lied, spied, conspired, and perpetrated all manner of atrocities throughout history, riding roughshod over the intrinsic values that make America a great nation. Now, all of a sudden, they’re the sainted saviours?

So deep is their hatred of the man elected to lead them that the so-called liberals and progressives in the US are now putting the bogeymen on a pedestal to bring down their new arch-enemy. It’s like they’re celebrating Aids to spite Ebola.
Don’t forget the incredible irony of how it began with ousted FBI director James Comey, who was first vilified by the anti-Trump brigade for shattering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, just 11 days before election day, with the revelation that his agents were investigating her dodgy email dealings.

But when he started butting heads with Trump over allegations of collusion with Russia and was unceremoniously fired for his efforts, Comey suddenly became Mother Teresa to orphaned Trump haters.
Sure, Russian spies and hackers may indeed have infiltrated the US elections, but American intelligence agencies have done far, far worse to other countries since time immemorial.

The CIA has undermined and sabotaged democratic elections throughout the world to protect and further American agenda, from stuffing ballot boxes and spreading false news to bribery, extortion and even murder. The NSA has spied, and is still spying, on everyone and their mother as I write this. These goons are the good guys?
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-op ... hate-trump
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Jason » Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:58 pm

I'm impressed with Comey. :dunno:

I follow him on twitter and I own his book.

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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Seabass » Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:20 pm

Big dumb strawman. No one thinks the CIA are "good guys" or "champions of democracy".
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Jason » Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:22 pm

You mean the CIA whose director used to run a black site? Oh yeah, I trust and admire her...

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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:31 pm

I think Comey, Strzok, Wray, Coats, Panetta, etc have spoken well about the public service ethos of their respective and former agencies. Sure, US intelligence agencies have done some dodgy stuff, but suggestions that they (all and/or any of them) are somehow removed from political oversight, that they're rogue as it were, seems to be being applied as a classic ad hom, as a rhetorical slight which aims to disparage and discredit in order to undermine their standing and work.

As I've said before, if the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc cannot be trusted to act in good faith within the scope of their constitutional remits then they should be disbanded. But whether they can be trusted should have some basis in hard evidence rather than political imperatives. Is there any evidence that any or all of them are or have acted beyond their constitutional limits?
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Seabass » Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:26 pm

The Trump thread is here by the way:
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 7#p1777017

Merge, mods? ( :hehe: )
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:51 pm

Forty Two wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:51 pm
I mean since when did the CIA, the FBI and the NSA become the good guys? To all purposes, they’ve always been the instruments of the “deep state” and destroyers of democracy. They have lied, spied, conspired, and perpetrated all manner of atrocities throughout history, riding roughshod over the intrinsic values that make America a great nation. Now, all of a sudden, they’re the sainted saviours?

So deep is their hatred of the man elected to lead them that the so-called liberals and progressives in the US are now putting the bogeymen on a pedestal to bring down their new arch-enemy. It’s like they’re celebrating Aids to spite Ebola.
Don’t forget the incredible irony of how it began with ousted FBI director James Comey, who was first vilified by the anti-Trump brigade for shattering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, just 11 days before election day, with the revelation that his agents were investigating her dodgy email dealings.

But when he started butting heads with Trump over allegations of collusion with Russia and was unceremoniously fired for his efforts, Comey suddenly became Mother Teresa to orphaned Trump haters.
Sure, Russian spies and hackers may indeed have infiltrated the US elections, but American intelligence agencies have done far, far worse to other countries since time immemorial.

The CIA has undermined and sabotaged democratic elections throughout the world to protect and further American agenda, from stuffing ballot boxes and spreading false news to bribery, extortion and even murder. The NSA has spied, and is still spying, on everyone and their mother as I write this. These goons are the good guys?
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-op ... hate-trump
What the fuck is this shit? You used to tell us about Obama's FBI or Obama's Justice department. Now all of a sudden the intelligence agencies are free agents that don't do the bidding of their president? This is laughable shit. Is there any proof that the FBI and CIA are unjustly after Trump? And there's even a daft tu quoque by proxy, your favourite practice, in there. So what if the CIA has done worse? Does that mean that it's ok for Russia to hack your elections?? :fp:
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by BarnettNewman » Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:28 pm

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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Joe » Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:33 am

pErvinalia wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:51 pm
Forty Two wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:51 pm
I mean since when did the CIA, the FBI and the NSA become the good guys? To all purposes, they’ve always been the instruments of the “deep state” and destroyers of democracy. They have lied, spied, conspired, and perpetrated all manner of atrocities throughout history, riding roughshod over the intrinsic values that make America a great nation. Now, all of a sudden, they’re the sainted saviours?

So deep is their hatred of the man elected to lead them that the so-called liberals and progressives in the US are now putting the bogeymen on a pedestal to bring down their new arch-enemy. It’s like they’re celebrating Aids to spite Ebola.
Don’t forget the incredible irony of how it began with ousted FBI director James Comey, who was first vilified by the anti-Trump brigade for shattering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, just 11 days before election day, with the revelation that his agents were investigating her dodgy email dealings.

But when he started butting heads with Trump over allegations of collusion with Russia and was unceremoniously fired for his efforts, Comey suddenly became Mother Teresa to orphaned Trump haters.
Sure, Russian spies and hackers may indeed have infiltrated the US elections, but American intelligence agencies have done far, far worse to other countries since time immemorial.

The CIA has undermined and sabotaged democratic elections throughout the world to protect and further American agenda, from stuffing ballot boxes and spreading false news to bribery, extortion and even murder. The NSA has spied, and is still spying, on everyone and their mother as I write this. These goons are the good guys?
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-op ... hate-trump
What the fuck is this shit? You used to tell us about Obama's FBI or Obama's Justice department. Now all of a sudden the intelligence agencies are free agents that don't do the bidding of their president? This is laughable shit. Is there any proof that the FBI and CIA are unjustly after Trump? And there's even a daft tu quoque by proxy, your favourite practice, in there. So what if the CIA has done worse? Does that mean that it's ok for Russia to hack your elections?? :fp:
Here's the money quote pErv:
But let’s set aside the insult to everyone’s intelligence and resist the urge to ridicule Trump over all this – there’s more than enough of that going on already. Instead, let’s take a look at an equally astonishing phenomenon that is the by-product of the 45th American president’s contempt for the intelligence community – the mind-boggling deification of spooks and G-men.
It's a feeble attempt to change the subject from the very real concern that our President is being controlled by a foreign power. Trump crapped his pants in front of the world, "but the real joke is on the intelligence agencies."

Whataboutism of the lowest sort. :airwank:
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by pErvinalia » Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:14 am

Yeah.

It seems 42 is really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Do we take it that he can no longer defend Trump's idiocy, so he has to change tack to peddling a thinly veiled 'deep state' conspiracy?
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Animavore » Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:17 am

Pathetic.
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:26 am

"The CIA has undermined and sabotaged democratic elections throughout the world to protect and further American agenda,"
I thought that was called 'Making American great again.'
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:51 am

Nothing new or surprising. The whole purpose of the CIA. It still runs Central and South America.
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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Forty Two » Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:28 pm

Seabass wrote:
Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:20 pm
Big dumb strawman. No one thinks the CIA are "good guys" or "champions of democracy".
....would you deign to ....say... distrust what they say? Or, would it be treason to do so?
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: The Intelligence Community - Champion of Democracy

Post by Forty Two » Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:46 pm

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:51 am
Nothing new or surprising. The whole purpose of the CIA. It still runs Central and South America.
Indeed, the CIA and the "intelligence community" was sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The CIA and the intelligence community said the North Vietnamese attacked the US in the Gulf of Tonkin. The CIA and the intelligence community deposed Allende in Chili. The CIA and the intelligence community ran Abscam, and "guns for hostages" etc.

As for this being "Trump's CIA" - the Russia issue came up in 2016, before Trump was elected. Guys like Brennan and Crapper were not Trump appointees.

Nobody would deny that Russia has taken action relative to American elections. The 2017 "intelligence report" that we've discussed before noted that it was a decades long practice of Russia to do so. Most of what they did was buy advertisements and conduct propaganda activities. There isn't an allegation that they "hacked the election." There were allegations of attempts to breach state voting systems, but there has never been any suggestion that they succeeded.

What is it that we're supposed to believe from the "intelligence community?" That Russia spies on us? That they try to hack computer systems? That they publish propaganda to "sow discord"? Fine. So what? China does that too. The US does that all over the world.

So, Trump said he doesn't know why it would be Russia? Big deal. He should never have "corrected" that. The cries of "treason" for him daring to question the conclusions of "the intelligence community" (given its record of being wrong, and outright lying) are laughable.

For me, the intelligence community has dragged us into too many wars already. They publish these vague reports, hiding behind secrecy so they don't have to show us the evidence, and politicians wash their hands of responsibility by saying "well, the intelligence community says they had WMD, or the intelligence community said they were going to massacre people in Libya, or the intelligence community said they attacked our ships in Vietnam, or the intelligence community said whatever..." -- then we get into a big mess, and it's found out later that the intelligence community was full of shit, and we're stuck. We're committed to the course of action whether the grounds originally advanced were true or not.

Starting with Vietnam, or earlier, the intelligence community has done hardly anything other than drag us into quagmire after quagmire. The intelligence community is who blocked communications from Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman, which could have averted 20 years of bloodshed. It was the intelligence community which dragged us into that war. It was the intelligence community that was behind Grenada in the 1980s. It was the intelligence community that was behind Nicaragua and arms for hostages. It was the intelligence community that dragged us into Kosovo. It was the intelligence community that dragged us into Somalia. It was the intelligence community that failed it's job to protect the the US in 1993 and 2001. It was the intelligence community which was behind WMD in Iraq. It was the intelligence community that was behind the Chili operations and Allende, the Mossadegh operation in Iran, etc. It was the intelligence community that was behind the false allegations about Libya causing that country to be destroyed.

Now we're supposed to take their word that Russia is now, once again, like the Soviet Union - and we're supposed to enter a new cold war with them, or worse, a hot war. Sue me if I wouldn't mind seeing what - exactly - they have proof of.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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