Sometimes the weight of tradition interferes with things. I think the internal mythology of the CIA contributes to their unaccountability. If I’m right about that, then a break with history is the best solution; it may also discourage other agencies from operating rogue if the CIA is punitively dismantled, but I’m not much into carrot-and-stick approaches(and especially not stick-and-stick approaches). And very few people should lose their jobs in the process–intelligence skills can’t be turned in like a disbanded army’s weapons–but a reassignment of everybody or even a simple rebranding could make a break with history and open a lot of windows.
As for your concern that we’ll lose intelligence capability, of course we will. When you get a new guitar you always sound like shit for a while, but dude, this old guitar sucks.

As a practical matter, the nation needs effective capability in three areas:

1. Intelligence Gathering
2. Intelligence Analysis
3. Covert Operations

The CIA is mediocre at best at the first, has primary expertise in the second, and the third is problematic no matter how you try to develop and deploy that function.

Intel gathering is accomplished by a large number of agencies and methodologies. The CIA should divest itself of elint and imagery and focus as an agency specifically on humint.

The CIA should be the central analysis and reporting operation within the Intelligence community.

Covert Operations has been mostly handed over to Military Intelligence, a process that has been evolving for decades as the civilian agencies looked to seconded military personnel for the requisite skills. But covert operations and direct action functions outside the C&C of the civilian leadership are always going to be problematic, so the short answer is there are no good answers to that part of the problem, but decision-making should clearly be weighted toward civilian intelligence organizations.

Of course, the CIA is large and well-funded enough to be able to protect it’s own existence as a primary function, so no agency level reorganization will be allowed to occur.

That said, the only possible good that can come out of the kind of investigation Holder is describing is a kind of a trojan horse, where in the process of defending themselves from prosecution, these low-level interrogators provide such solid, damning testimony up the chain of command that it leads to utterly unavoidable prosecutions of the formulators of the policy and those that actually ordered it’s implementation.

Am I optimistic? No, sadly, I’m not. But that is the glimmer of hope I hold out for the rule of law…

mikey

Ok today is my cockeyed optimist day where I keep seeing half full glasses–I must have gotten a really good night’s sleep last night or sumthin’–but when I was a prosecutor and working on public corruption cases , usual model was start at the bottom on the low level figures and make cases agaisnt them and then flip ‘em to get the bigger fish.

If I were Holder, et al, and I didn’t wan the special prosecutor idea scuttled altogether, I would agree to limit the authority–at the outset–and wait to see what that person wa bale to come up with.

If that person came back with really compelling evidence about higher ups, there is always the opportunity to change that Sp. P’s mandate, appoint an additional Sp. P for the higher ups or prosecute such cases straight out of DOJ.

Further, if appropriate, the material developed during the first phase investiagtion could in some cirmstances, spelled out in Rule 6(e), be turned over to Congress.

Of course NONE of these later develpoemetns could ever happen if Holder cannot get a Sp. P in the first place. So, limiting the Sp. P’s mandate to the lower phase of the investigation does no harm to a later investigation–if one is warranted by the evidence–and means that something could get started.

I see this as a glass half full

But perhaps the most interesting revelation from the Greg Miller LA Times article is that some of the torturers did not know what was in the John Yoo memo.

Beyond that, officials said it wasn’t clear that any CIA interrogators were ever informed of the limits laid out in the Justice Department memo.

“A number of people could say honestly, correctly, ‘I didn’t know what was in it,’ ” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the inner workings of the interrogation program.

Why do you think we are now hearing the information that the interrogators did not see or know the specifics of the limiting memo? They are sowing the seeds to have the ability to decline prosecution “because there is not a reasonable likelihood of conviction” and since they were never going to go further, that will be that. The DOJ may put on a little dog and pony show “investigation” but they are setting up the result they desire, i.e. no charges within the falsely limited scope; and no going farther than that. And all the while, the time is running on the eight year statutes of limitation. There is absolutely no reason not to believe this is the total bullshit it appears to be.

Bingo, exactly what I thought. Build a case as the defendants spill all the beans..makes sense to me.

But bmaz, if they never saw the memos, they must have heard about them from higher-ups they could name, right? And if not, wouldn’t they be required to follow investigative techniques they were taught earlier?

Agreed this is the worst of both worlds the GOP will say by prosecuting the CIA torture pawns we are tying the hands of future CIA agents.
I trust that our TV Dems will not point out that Torture is a war crime. Nor will they point out that if torture really worked don’t you think that after all these years Bush’s Torture squads would have found Ossama?
Plus it lets Bush go free and any evidence we get first from slimy torturers the GOP will say was given to save their own skins from prosecution.

I am not saying do nothing but what ever happened to the idea of a Truth Commission for low level people and immunity from prosecution provided everything thy said turned out to be the truth. This would provide evidence against high level people and give us the information we need quick before Bush could destroy it all.
Testimony could be on C-Span it would rivet the nation and build public will toward prosecuting Bush, Rummy, and Darth.

If you did not see the memo but were told its said torture was ok well my friend might be a traffic cop and he might say its ok to go 50 MPH in a school zone but I at least would want to see that in writing first.
I know the CIA will say its top secret but just how top secret is a memo the CIA can’t show the people who are using it as a shield to break international law?
Wait does the memo matter the CIA kills people in foreign countries they know that if caught only America will ignore their crime.
Holder could turn them over to the Hague if he has enough evidence right? Any movement on America joining the World Court.

I trust the World Court not to go all club fed on the CIA.

That bit has been bothering me since first reading it in Marcy’s thread earlier today. And now suddenly a thought. This bit of possibly disinformation has a familiar smell to it. The smell of a Kiriakou. I’ll bet anything he is the source of the quote.

They missed the fall of the USSR… they warned Bush before 9-11 and let his “you can go now, you’ve covered your ass” response be the final say. They let the neonuts lie us all into Iraq. They torture… they start needless conflict after needless conflict. We don’t even know how many billions they get every year (much less steal or run in drugs and weapons.

Hell yes, prosecute them… and tear it all down… start over. Make it much smaller and much more accountable.. including requirements that every member of the House get straight answers on any question they have. period.

Hey, Rev. Would you kindly email me at tellblondie@ca.rr.com? Thanks. Got a question for ya.

sorry. forgot I have to be tricky…tellblondie at ca dot rr dot com

And make it extremely costly for them to manipulate our own press.

Get rid of inbred ivy league who think they are superior to everyone else like the brown people they torture.
Get some more people who speak foreign languages. Use Psyche tests to screen out the nuts. Christian fundamentalists and well anyone with their own agenda should be axed America is the agenda we need facts the real facts even if they conflict with your agenda.
We need morals Ollie North selling weapons to Iran after they killed a few hundred Marines in Lebanon and then turning around and using the cash to buy drugs to sell to America?
Just who’s side is he on? We need people with morals cripes Ollie had to go with drugs he could not have just invested in the stock market Bush 1 is connected I’m sure he had some insider trading tips.

Hmmm, must be getting close to the OPR report release.

Oh, blah, blah blah. The CIA is just one minor cog in the wheel of govt rolling over everyone. If it were deep-6ed, they would need to develope something to take its place. It’s hopeless.

Has anyone read Holder’s bio page on Wikipedia?

Perhaps there should be another thread entitled “Worse than no AG at all”.

In his final days with the Clinton administration, Holder was involved with Clinton’s last-minute pardon of fugitive and Democratic contributor Marc Rich. ]The reporter Joe Conason contends that Rich’s pardon was actually a favor from Clinton to members of the Israeli government, for which Clinton hoped to gain progress in the peace talks between Israel and Palestine.[15]

Holder was also involved in Clinton’s decision to reduce the criminal sentences of 16 members of the Boricua Popular Army, an organization that has been categorized by the FBI as a terrorist organization. The clemency request was initially opposed in 1996 by U.S. Pardons Attorney Margaret Love.
According to The Hartford Courant, the clemency was unusual because it was opposed by the FBI, the federal prosecutor and the victims. According to the newspaper, it was also unusual because, before the commutations, the Boricua Popular Army members were not required to repudiate their actions, and they were not asked to provide any information concerning the whereabouts of Victor Manuel Gerena, a co-conspirator and one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, or the millions of dollars stolen by the group in a 1983 robbery of Wells Fargo in West Hartford, Connecticut.[20]

Private practice
From 2001 until he became Attorney General, Holder worked as an attorney at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.,[8] representing clients such as Merck and the National Football League.

In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International in a case that involved Chiquita’s payment of “protection money” to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations.[22][23] In the agreement, Chiquita’s officials pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $25 million. Holder represented Chiquita in the civil action that grew out of this criminal case.[23]

In March 2004 Holder and Covington & Burling were hired by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to act as a special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board. The Gaming Board had voted 4-1 earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont, Illinois. That vote defied the recommendation of the board’s staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino’s developer.. `~~~Wiki

Lotsa stuff here, negative about Holder, including stuff you cite, but also Holder’s defense of United Fruit scumbags. Very interesting in light of Hillary’s defense of Guatamala coup.

And switch that old rule… make it legal to kill heads of State, but illegal to kill innocent civilians.

Sure….

Hopefully something a little better at doing its job. Hiring more people who speak foreign languages would be a start. Sure the CIA must be immoral to over throw governments but must they they did that in the 70’s to every place in South America and now Venezuela, Boliva, Brazil, Argentina, Peru,Chile, Uruguay, etc have gone Left.
Nothing wrong with that but now they hate us immoral acts can boomerang.

Certainly the CIA doesn’t make policy. The government entities who do are the ones who should be held accountable for any abuses that occur as a result of the CIA implementing that policy. Since CYA is the Golden Rule in government, THAT ain’t gonna happen.

In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International in a case that involved Chiquita’s payment of “protection money” to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations.[22][23] In the agreement, Chiquita’s officials pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $25 million. Holder represented Chiquita in the civil action that grew out of this criminal case.[23]

Money quote LooseHeadProp was all over this when Holder was being confirmed I expect she will write an I told you so piece soon.

Brilliant!

You mean Honduras? Or has something happened? Hilary would not be defending the military take over years back would she?

On CIA and dismantling it: The time is ripe for a consideration of restructuring our national security agencies; it hasn’t been done in 62 years in a fundamental way. And there very well should be some downsizing and reorientation. And there needs to be a better statutory framework that can ensure civil liberties and diplomacy and oversight.

On Holder’s investigation: If the evidence from the lower levels is thoroughly and rigorously examined, it should lead up the chain of command in spite of efforts to narrow it. As Marcy asks, if the interrogators didn’t know about the limits on what they were to do, why didn’t they know and isn’t that a management failure.

Harry Truman:

“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”

Billy Joel:
“JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?”

There is quite a discussion about this Chiquita affair between myself and bmaz over at Emptywheel. I can’t recall the name of the thread, but is within the last day or so.

Thanks for your interest.

John F. Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs:

“Something very bad is going on within the CIA and I want to know what it is. I want to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds.”

So few of us even know how to think liberally anymore..)

Haven’t seen LHP around for a long time…

Here’s Bill Moyers’ outstanding documentary “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis”

http://video.google.com/videop…..government

Yeah last I saw her was the Holder confirmation hearings this might bring her back.

This will get some attention now.

Only the 20% the rest were just to busy to be bothered that is until Bush by his failure’s forced them to pay attention.

The problem is not just the CIA. There are something like 17 US gov’t intelligence agencies…the CIA was originally supposed to be the aggregator and analysis clearing house for all this…the initiation of covert ops created a whole new level. Now, the DNI seems to be doing the job of synthesis for the Presidet….therefore, I really don’t see how eliminating the CIA would really affect much. Especially since so much of it has been privatized, as Dr. Hillhouse has documented.

It’s pulling on threads. Find a thread and pull it. What unravels is interesting.

Ignorance of the law is no plea.

“the hunting and killing of Beitullah Mehsud’ is a success of some sort, eh, Spencer?

Funny thing, that. Many of us, especially we who believe in the rule of law, don’t consider arm’s length killing using predator drones to represent anything close to a “success.” In fact, some of us consider this type of indiscriminate killing and collective punishment to be a war crime of the highest order.

Do you believe everything the CIA tells you, or just those things that help you make your arguments?

IMHO, any competent prosecutor who starts with investigation/prosecuton of low-level CIA torturers will inevitably be drawn to the crimes up the line, and eventually at the very top. Prosecutors always start at the bottom and promise a good deal for the first guy who “rats out” the guys at the next level. Once this gets going, it’ll be impossible to stop it, thank God.

But I’m appalled by the presumptions underlying the Miller/Meyer article that headlined today’s LA Times. Before Bush-II, it was commonly acknowledged by educated Americans that “just following orders” was a bogus defense. Per Miller and Meyer:

Officials said it wasn’t clear that any CIA interrogators were ever informed of the limits laid out in the Justice Department memo.

“A number of people could say honestly, correctly, ‘I didn’t know what was in it.’” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the inner workings of the interrogation program.

The defendants at Nuremburg had the ultimate law of Germany, clear orders from Der Fuhrer, authorizing their actions, and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled those authorizations irrelevant. So, why should a torture authorization from John Yoo that they didn’t bothered to read get BushCo torturers off the hook?

If an investigation focuses only on front-line personnel, it’s a sham and a cover-up. It’s true that prosecutors often start with the little guys and work upward, but when government investigates itself we have seen scape-goating of the little guy again and again while the big boyz get off. And it shouldn’t be limited to CIA; it’s also the rest of the security apparatus and the military that need to be investigated for torture violations and prosecuted where there is evidence. And it should go all the way to the top – good luck with that.

i wonder if the idea of investigating and prosecuting only the lower level operatives isn’t specifically designed to breed a level of public disgust and thereby de-whet the appetite of the general public from the whole idea of any accountability at all .. for anyone .

as disgusting as the whole mess is .. somewhere there are over a hundred body bags containing the broken battered bodies of what were once human beings being held as prisoners in our charge ..and we failed them miserably .. the law failed .. the ingrained standards of hundreds of years of history failed them .. and common decency failed them ..

and now .. it appears as if those who beat them to death under the guise of interrogation and those who made it possible .. and those who twisted the law to enable it ..and those who most certainly ordered it to happen will walk away scot-free ..

the only hope i have left is that the “history” as written in the “rest of the world” will tell the truth of what these heinous pitiful bastards actually did .. and hold them forth to the rest of mankind to be the despicable turds they actually are …

Old Italian proverb,

” Fish rots from the head,not the tail”.

In other words,corruption is top down,not bottom up.

Wouldn’t not knowing about or what’s in Yoo Bybee etc. memos mean they knew at best they were supposed to honor the law prior to the memos?

@36

The title of the Emptywheel thread is “Gonzales and Bush haven’t Spoken yet”.

Maybe getting the private contractors out of it is the answer. Government employees (except at the top ranks) are usually good people in my experience.

(RonD, the most polite guy on all of the internet. Plus, he does the bidding of his bride!) (The queen)

Whoops. Guess I misunderstood what we were doing here.

First, I thought we were discussing actual policy and it’s implementation, not some fantasy that has no chance of occurring, one that doesn’t even include any realistic path to it’s implementation. Example: Just saying “The CIA needs to be dissolved” without any discussion of how this might happen politically or bureaucratically and without any practical discussion of what might replace it is, frankly, childish. Grow up and THINK about the world you actually live in.

Second, how many people commenting on this thread have actually MET or worked with intelligence personnel? Your cartoon cutout descriptions of their inherent evil and deep-seated conspiracies might have a place, but somehow I had hoped this wasn’t it. Oh well, live and learn.

Third, what did you expect? Obama is NOT a liberal. You might well be, and you might well have decided he was a better choice than John McCain, but if you thought you were electing anything but a center-right corporate friendly politician who saw no benefit in implementing a progressive agenda, you were ignoring facts and believing nothing short of RNC propaganda. Holder is WAY more than you had any right to actually hope for. One wonders how quickly he might be replaced with a more compliant AG.

Sorry. I usually don’t care where these threads run off to. But this is egregious….

mikey

If we were able to blow up Mehsud and did so, that wouldn’t have been indiscriminate, would it?

I guess we need our own CIA. Thanks, Spencer et. al.

I read over here occasionally (and I will more) but I usually don’t comment. I appreciate your comments.

Um, actually ignorance of the law when the law is so compartmentalized and secreted that it cannot be reasonably known or determined by the actor certainly would be a defense. Would it be a successful defense for the offenses contemplated here? I don’t know; I would like to think not, but there are a lot of defenses that a good attorney could utilize if only low level torture agents are prosecuted without there ever being any effort to also go after higher ups and principals.

In reply to #53:

Um, actually ignorance of the law when the law is so compartmentalized and secreted that it cannot be reasonably known or determined by the actor certainly would be a defense.

If a clear and direct order from ultimate national authority is no defense, how can compartmentalized, secreted, obscure legalistic casuistry hold water?

Some folks, like me, think it’s egregious to treat these war criminals run amok for decades like anything other than the results we do know about.. no matter how nice they might be in person… no matter how difficult taking them out of budget might be.

And I think the first part of the multi-faceted post invited discussion of the very type you ridicule.

Just because the criminal enterprise will likely continue, doesn’t make one naive for saying it shouldn’t.

Not sure I understand the question, but my point was simply that the theory “ignorance of the law is no defense” is predicated on “the law” being public, available and able to be known. That was not the case with the guidelines in the torture memos. The discussion has been about Holder and DOJ prosecuting line level people “for exceeding the guidelines”, but the line level people do not seem to have been apprised, nor could they reasonably apprise themselves, of the memos because the memos were classified and closely held. Hey, I think the whole lot of them, both line level and principals, up to and including Bush and Cheney, are guilty. But I can see how they could be defended by criminal defense lawyers that know what they are doing.

But then you default to the law and experiences that are known and applicable: Geneva, laws of war, Convention against Torture, the Constitution, and Nuremberg. It just makes the infractions more egregious. They weren’t overstepping around the edges, perhaps inadvertently, a new line that radically redefined torture. They were overstepping the existing law which just makes the nature of the offense that much more extreme.

You beat me to it but aside from the Cuban missile crisis in the early 60s, the CIA in its history has been wrong or missed every major event it was supposed to catch. Any organization that gets so much so wrong so often needs to be completely rethought or done away with.

the theory “ignorance of the law is no defense” is predicated on “the law” being public, available and able to be known. That was not the case with the guidelines in the torture memos.

There is clear federal law (e.g., the War Crimes Act of 1996 and sections 2340, 2340A, and 2340B) and Senate-ratified international law (e.g., UN Convention Against Torture) that apply independent of any DoJ “guidelines.” And, if direct orders from Hitler aren’t exonerating circumstances, neither are secret memos from John Yoo.

I agree with you. But you are misunderstanding my point. Holder/DOJ has indicated that the only charge/theory they are pursuing (if they, in fact, even do that) is for exceeding the DOJ/OLC guidelines. That is all I am addressing. However, there are always defenses that can be presented to any criminal charge; to admit that is not to condone the conduct nor say they will necessarily be effective. From a moral perspective, these assholes are indefensible; from the perspective of a criminal defense attorney, they can be defended. And you will not know whether it is successful or not until a jury decides.

The tenor of your question, where the efficacy of such an attack is itself still an open question, speaks directly to such “successes.” I do not share your credulity where the CIA is concerned.

Besides, this is not open to interpretation, international law is quite clear. Please see the Geneva conventions of 1949 (Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec. 2b; and Protocol I, Art. 85, Sec. 3):

carpet bombing

“Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden. If it becomes apparent that an objective is not a military one, or if an attack is expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects then the attack must be canceled or suspended.”

“An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.”

Citation to a primary source for this as a quote, please.

Snopes says this first appears in 2002 and cannot be found in that form although Truman did have misgivings later. The direct mention in his Memoirs of the connection with Gestapo was him saying that in the setting up of the CIA, the intent was to make sure that it was limited—that Americans did not want a Gestapo.

The best Snopes could figure out for a first link of the quote as presented was on a survivalist blog.

i suppose the clear question then should be: can an OLC memo suspend or alter published US black letter law ??

i think not .. and i hope not as well .. especially when said memo is classified .. dangerous ground .. no ??

No, it cannot. It can and will, however, affect how and if it is prosecuted by the DOJ (who wrote the damn thing remember) and is probably admissible as evidence in support of an affirmative justification defense.

Hi bmaz. Yup, you and I are on the same page. But here is my problem:

Holder/DOJ has indicated that the only charge/theory they are pursuing (if they, in fact, even do that) is for exceeding the DOJ/OLC guidelines.

AFAIK, “exceeding DOJ/OLC guidelines” is not a crime in and of itself. It is merely Holder’s threshold for perusing prosecution. I presume these individuals would be prosecuted under normal federal laws such as 2340X and WCA of 1996, etc., all of which have been promulgated and prosecuted, etc. It’s too bad that they listened “in good faith” to incompetent counsel, but everyone knows that torturing people is against the law and that water torture is torture.

That was one of the worst attempts at applying law that I’ve seen in since Yoo left.
Equating one or two missiles from a drone with carpet bombing is torturous.

You beat me to it but aside from the Cuban missile crisis in the early 60s, the CIA in its history has been wrong or missed every major event it was supposed to catch.

EVERY major event? You’re taking the position they have NEVER once been right? And I’m supposed to what, take your argument seriously?

Just because the criminal enterprise will likely continue, doesn’t make one naive for saying it shouldn’t.

That’s exactly what it is. Naive and pointless. Do you want to do something that works towards improvement, or do you want to throw a pointless tantrum?

And your sloppy writing seems to suggest that EVERY intelligence professional that ever went into the field is a war criminal. If you think there has never been a dedicated professional who worked in American, Soviet or any other intelligence organization, you have led a sadly sheltered life, and let me suggest that I have seen things you would have been well served to observe…

mikey

Oh, that is exactly right; my guess is 2340 only. I think if they do this (and I am not convinced they will really charge; I think the odds are investigate and fizzle at best), they will do it in as limited and bullshit of fashion possible.

Well, I am sure glad we got a worldly and omniscient guy like you around to straighten all of us out. I reckon we would be in a world of hurt without your strong leadership.

Nope. I don’t know what I said that you think is so objectionable.

I wasn’t the one who said every intel operator is a war criminal. Do YOU believe that, bmaz? Somehow, I doubt that.

Do YOU believe that the CIA has NEVER been right?

I actually, you’ll notice, agree wholeheartedly with you. But because I think we should be honest and recognize, oh, I dunno, how ’bout REALITY when we have these conversations, you have a problem with me?

You can be a snot all you want, and make sarcastic comments. But can you point to something I’ve actually said that was, oh, WRONG?

I’m sorry my life experience is different than yours. Do you really think that disqualifies me from offering a point of view? Or would you be my friend if I drank the kool aid and agreed that the CIA has been wrong about everything, ever, forever and ever amen?

mikey

Old Spice with a touch of bipartisanshit.

Naw, I was overly harsh; sorry about that. Which, ironically is effectively the same issue I took with your comment. Guess I didn’t do very well there. No, I don’t think everything the Company has done has been a failure (quite frankly I would assume a real success by them would contemplate us never knowing about it; failures are much more likely to become known). They have had some doozy failures though and I do think they are a little out of control. Something needs to be done, but I am not knowledgeable enough to know what it really is.

Yes. The CIA is in desperate need of reform and reorg.

Frankly, so is the pentagon.

The problem with these immense self-perpetuating bureaucracies is that they have deep, long term congressional constituencies and devote a tremendous amount of their time and effort into perpetuating themselves.

Like every other large organization, the CIA is populated with a full spectrum of human beings, from venal thugs to ambitious poseurs to full on psychos. I once saw two frenchmen in unmarked tigerstripes murder a dozen unarmed civilians. To be honest, I don’t know if they were intel or contractors, but yeah, they’re out there. I’ve met some folks that genuinely tried to do good work. I have no idea if it’s true or not, but isn’t that what we say about Valerie Plame?

Thanks for the kind words. I feel better about the world…

mikey

That’s not my definition or an extrapolation. I copied that header directly from a document of international law. I provided a reference, all you provide is your bloodlust-laden rationalizations.

Do you deny that ” incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects” is not to be expected with these attacks? Tell me, exactly how many killed and mangled children DO you find acceptable?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08…..pstan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Four people, including a wife of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, were killed Wednesday by what local residents said was a missile strike from an American drone.

The missile struck a house in the remote village of Zanghara, in South Waziristan, about 1 a.m. Wednesday. Local residents reached by telephone confirmed that one of the wives of Mr. Mehsud, the leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, was among those killed. Her name or age could not be confirmed.

Five others, including four children, were reportedly wounded in the missile strike.

From what I heard from friends that were involved (a long time ago), the CIA is essentially two organizations:
– the Directorate of Operations, who are the guys that do shit like overthrowing democracies in Guatemala and Iran.
– the Directorate of Intelligence/Analysis, who are the scholars and spooks who try to figure out what’s what.

I don’t think that both should be in the same agency.

Agreed with all that.

chimpy, do us a favor and find a definition of carpet bombing.

Additionally, I’m so crazed with bloodlust that I think that killing Mehsud, his wife, and bodyguards isn’t an offense against humanity.

But please do find out what carpet bombing means.

What you’re advocating is, by the definition of international laws, cited twice above, carpet bombing and a war crime. Maybe you should do us a favor and develop some reading skills?

Glad you’re so comfortable with the administration of collective punishment and unquestioningly handing judge-jury-executioner powers over to historically unreliable and duplicitous surrogates and mercenaries.

How about the wounded kids, you fine with that too? Ya think it’s making us safer to blow the legs off of innocent children?

Your willingness to suspend disbelief in CIA duplicity is as galling as that of the pants-pissing Iraq war supporters in 2002. Were you down with that, too? Thought so.

chimpy, type out a definition of carpet bombing, will you?

Then we’ll read it together.

Since you apparently can’t find the citations I’ve provided, I’ll read post 61 to you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. But not until you tell me exactly how many children can be mangled in drone attacks before it becomes unacceptable to you.

Only about 6% of the casualties caused by drones since 2006 have been “on target” and over 600 Afghani and Pakistani innocents have been killed as a result. But you sit there and type the same childish thing over and over. Must be nice for you to kill kids vicariously.

c a r p e t ___ b o m b i n g

You could look it up while I’m busy killing kids vicariously.

Here is what a site run by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and calling itself “Geneva Conventions, A reference guide,” says of “carpet bombing”:

carpet bombing

Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden. If it becomes apparent that an objective is not a military one, or if an attack is expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects then the attack must be canceled or suspended. (Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec. 2b)

An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. (Protocol I, Art. 85, Sec. 3)

However, the full text of Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec 2b reads:

(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

Note that SPJ’s comment on “carpet bombing” omits the portion of Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec 2b that I’ve highlighted.

IMHO, the collateral damage caused by our drones is horrific and both militarily and politically counterproductive, which makes it quite puzzling from a technical and operational perspective.

From what I’ve read and seen on the military channel, those drones are equipped with HellFire missles, which have a reputation for being quite accuracte. If that reputation is warranted, then the U.S. forces are persistently employing very sloppy targeting protocols in a theater of war where such targeting is indirectly killing Americans. So why are they doing it?

Conservatives love taking these type of positions shortly after governments they elect make hash out of the government they despise. They also play favorites among wars cf: David Frum’s new skepticism about Afghanistan.