Obama's praise of the CIA could easily have been spoken by Bush. It seems to me that in accelerating the drone attacks and militarising the CIA along with its Xe Blackwater comrades Obama is if anything worse than Bush.
it gave me no pleasure to note the grim truth that was confirmed, yet again, by the attack at Khost: Those who live by dirty war, die by dirty war. The CIA-mercenary squad at the base was a key part of what the New York Times rightly describes as the CIA's evolution into a "paramilitary organization." Like all terrorists, they operate outside the law, claiming moral superiority as their justification. And for this particular band, what they have dealt out to others -- sudden death in a surprise attack with no possibility of defense -- they have now been dealt in turn.
Of course, the NYT seems to find no moral problem with the United States of America operating "paramilitary" squads of spies and mercenaries carrying out "extrajudicial assassinations" -- or "murders," as they once would have been called -- in foreign lands occupied by American military forces slaughtering civilians on a regular basis. (We noted one such slaughter in Afghanistan last week; now yet another one is being reported.) The story which carried this description is concerned largely with describing the struggle of these noble bands as they struggle manfully on distant borders to keep us safe.
In this, the tone of the story strongly echoes the genuinely sick-making words of Barack Obama after the incident. From CNN:
"These brave Americans were part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a written statement Thursday.
"The United States would not be able to maintain the freedom and security that we cherish without decades of service from the dedicated men and women of the CIA."
The CIA's decades-long record of sickening crime, outright atrocity, constitutional subversion, bungling, near-unbelievable incompetence, and unrelenting exacerbation of hatred for and violence toward the United States is indisputable. (For just one egregious example, see "The Secret Sharers.") Few government organizations in world history have been so inimical to the national interests of the state they purport to serve. It was with very good reason that John F. Kennedy -- to whom Obama's sycophants often liken their hero -- once declared his intention to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." (Nor can it be entirely coincidental that Kennedy was later murdered in a case that had innumerable ties to the security apparat.)
There is nothing further from the truth -- nothing further from the established historical record -- than Obama's statement that the CIA has been absolutely indispensable in "maintaining the freedom and security" of the United States. On the contrary; the historical record clearly shows that the activities of the CIA have, time and again, reduced both the freedom and security of the people of the United States.
Yet here we have Obama, once again, groveling to this renegade, retrograde, criminal organization -- much as he did early on in his presidency, when he cravenly guaranteed the Agency's thuggish torturers that they need never fear prosecution from his administration for the KGB-like, Stasi-like, Gestapo-like atrocities they had inflicted on their victims.
Instead of shattering the CIA, or even curtailing it, the NYT story confirms, yet again, that Obama is accelerating the militarization of the agency, and giving it broad new scope to deceive and murder. What's more, as we noted here a few days ago, Obama's handpicked "special envoy" for the "Af-Pak front," Richard Holbrooke, admitted, in a little-noticed story last month, that the United States is carrying out covert operations in "every country in the world." And all of this is accepted without debate, without demur, as a just, honorable and natural state of affairs.
And while Obama is praising the murderers, torturers and incompetents of the CIA, the Agency itself is plotting its revenge for the blowback against its own dirty war, as CNN reports, with an obvious frisson of titillation at the tough talk:
"This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations," [an anonymous] intelligence official vowed. "There are some very bad people who eventually are going to have a very bad day," the official promised Friday.
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