IMHO: The Spies Who Should Come in from the Cold (and Heat)

By: KathyinBlacksburg
Published On: 7/13/2007 1:00:00 AM

Cooking CIA intel didn't work, So Bush-Cheney want to privatize intel to "have it their way." One-by-one, CIA career analysts and operatives have gone public complaining of the Bush-Cheney effort to cook the intelligence.  BUSHCO purged many CIA dissenters from radical right orthodoxy.  Its attempts to cook intel have made it into the correspondence of British diplomats, the world press, and (belatedly) our own.  Poor George and Dick. They tried and they tried.  They huffed and they puffed and they couldn't blow the doors of the CIA in.  So they got creative.  They've turned to entrepreneurial spies.  Just what America needs (NOT!) But there they go again, acting as if our security services should become like the neighborhood hamburger stand:  Rent-a-spy, at Bush's service.

A recent Washington Post story (behind subscription wall) revealed that increasing reliance on private intel is big business in Baghdad.  And then there was this gem about one contract:

The contract is the largest for private security work in Iraq. Tucked into the 774-page description is a little-known provision to outsource intelligence operations that, in an earlier time, might have been tightly controlled by the military or government agencies such as the CIA. The government continues to gather its own intelligence, but it also increasingly relies on private companies to collect sensitive information.

"Sensitive" information, indeed. 

Read between the lines and you wonder how exactly BUSHCO can justify this degradation of our security services.  Furthermore, given a previously lax Congress, which until Election 2006 provided zero oversight on this administration and rubber stamped its unConstitutional agenda, it's mind boggling to imagine how much worse it could be once the field is in the anything-goes private world of mercenaries.


The intelligence committees of both the House and Senate should put a stop to this dangerous breach of security.  To sit idly by makes us less safe, security-wise, Constitution-wise, and privacy-wise.  But just as ominous, it turns private citizen against private citizen.  It's got all the makings of a fourth-reich. 

Senator James Webb wants to curtail privatized armies.  I agree. We also should follow suit with respect to privatized spying on lawful citizens.  Constitutional protections were in place for a reason-- abuses had happened before.  One of the biggest crimes of Watergate was the turning of the US government against its own people.  Here we go again.  Moreover, keeping America safe doesn't extend to just "making stuff up" or telling Bush/Cheney what they want to hear.  Intel the BUSH/Cheney way dpes nothing to reestablish our credibility and reputation in the world.

This week the new bogey men tour appeared-- Bush  and Michael Chertoff (and his rumbling gut)implying we should all be afraid once again.  Now that few in America even listen to them anymore, they think they can ratchet up the fear index and recapture both our psyches and our allegiance to their fix of the intel. 

Americans need those in charge of our security to be both loyal to us, the citizens, and to operate within the law.  We need those entrusted to secure this nation, such as Chertoff, to take real threats seriously, and refrain from idle fear-mongering. While our government should make meaningful efforts to prevent terrorism, it should not use any risk of terrorism to control and manipulate the citizenry. 

We live in a dangerous world.  Unfortunately, BUSHCO have less sense of the real risks to Americans [no, or insufficient, health insurance;  auto-accidents; annual flu (not bird flu); heart disease; cancer and the like].  In what kind of BUSHWORLD does it make sense to lose more lives purportedly to "deal with" terrorism than have been lost because of it.  In what kind of BUSHWORLD does the Constitution cease to exist as a meaningful document?  Right-wingers have longed for a new Constitutional Convention, wherein they could write our freedoms out of the Constitution. They don't need to bother anymore.  Bush has it covered.

Comments



We live in a dangerous world (MohawkOV1D - 7/13/2007 1:41:41 AM)
made even more so by the privitazation of our military and intelegence services.  We have no oversight of how these private resources are applied and who they answer to.  Who gives the orders and who signs the checks.

What will these companies do if/when the Global War on Terror ends (begins)?  Blackwater, SAIC, CACI, KBR, etc, etc, etc, are massive organizations with 100's of thousands of "employees".  They have almost as many boots on the ground in Afgahnistan and Iraq as the US Military.  What do they do and where do they go when the war is over.

My guess is that the "war" will never be over and BUSHCO has unleashed a genie that can never be put back in the bottle.  If you'll remember James Baker from December 2000, "there is no constitutional crisis, there are no tanks in the street, our government continues to function".

I'll bet we won't be that lucky come January 21st, 2009.



When the contracts end (Teddy - 7/13/2007 9:34:42 AM)
with the US government, for whatever reason, or the mercenary captains accept other offers, their subordinate boots on the ground go with them, carrying information and secret technology from the US with them, to put to use for whomever their new contract is with, just like the condotteri of Renaissance Italy.

In other words, not only do we have no control or oversight over them while they work supposedly for us, except that we the taxpayers get to pay for them, but we have no control over what they do after their contract with the US expires, and they go--- where? To a hostile foreign power? To, perhaps, a terrorist organisation? Or, maybe they will be re-hired as a Praetorian Guard for use on American soil, as Blackwater has already shown up after Katrina in New Orleans, "policing looters." The Bushies could get them on the scene fast enough, but not any substantive aid (for all those black residents).

Once a nation ceases to rely on its own population for fighters in real wars, it is facing its final, quick decline.