On Jun 22, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Realism wasn't the term mentioned here. It's been said that the CIA
> employees who have desk jobs are liberal, honest, progressive, etc. --
> all based on such solid evidence as a few acquaintances here and
> there.
No, it's also based on an understanding of its history. Have you ever read any histories of the CIA? They are - or were - "liberal" in the way that Truman and JFK were - dedicated agents of empire who are willing to be quite brutal while using humanitarian rhetoric. They're not likely to play cowboy, with taunts like "dead or alive" or "bring it on." They, or at least many of them, realize that you have to know something about the people you're trying to dominate, which is why they and their civilian counterparts created the discipline of area studies in the 1950s. As I recall, the Church Commission report revealed that the CIA's analysts warned the Nixon admin against the dangers of invading Cambodia, but they did it anyway. Similarly with Iraq - a lot of analysts predicted, quite accurately, that it would be a disaster.
Doug