Spooks (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Alex Cockburn going the Hitchens way?)

[Carl Remick]

>From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
>
>I grew up with a lot of spooks ...
>
>The ex-ops were mostly pleasant, intelligent, but
>mostly rather dull people ...
>
>The real point, Carl, is the problem is a bad system,
>not bad people. It's a system that takes nice
>patriotic, interesting, sane people ...
>
>--- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >  You know, I've met a few people in the past who
> > wanted to work for the CIA. Not especially
> > right-wing in outlook, more like some sort of comic
> > book conception of things, not far from the kind of
> > Asian-Buddha-master-ninja-special-forces crank kind
> > of person (Stephen Seagal) ...

Be they dullards or comic book heroes, people who who want to be spies 
axiomatically have a tenuous and malign grasp of reality.  They aren't 
scholars interesting in amassing knowledge about different peoples that 
bridges cultural gaps in any productive way.  They are people eager to 
weaponize information and advance imperial causes.  Since they spend their 
entire lives in disguise, it's not at all surprising that they come across 
as "mostly pleasant" -- that's what being a psychopath is all about.  They 
are the devil's henchmen.

Carl