Jan 28, 2017

Controlling the CIA

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US Senator Blows the Whistle: Americans Kept in the Dark as CIA Wages Covert Wars Across the Globe


Rand Paul reminds Americans that they are not allowed to know how many covert wars the CIA is waging. In other words: the Agency is conducting multiple secret wars with basically zero transparency or oversight. Democracy in action!
Rudy Panko  at Russia Insider


Approximately how many countries are being actively ruined by the Central Intelligence Agency right now as we type these words? Unless you are one of eight members of Congress "in the know", it's basically impossible to ever find out.
This is because the United States is the world's greatest and most exceptional representative democratic republic.
We know that we don't know how many countries the CIA is destroying thanks to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, one of the few individuals in Congress who isn't a total butt muncher. During a recent interview with CNN, Paul dropped this painful truth bomb:
I think the CIA needs more oversight. Our intelligence community has very little oversight. There are only eight members of Congress that truly know what is going on in the CIA. That truly know what is going on as far as covert war around the world.

And I really think that war --unless there is an extraordinary exception-- should be fought with the approval of the Congress, and the approval of the American people. That is what our founding fathers thought. They took that power away from the president, and gave it to Congress. They specifically precluded the president from going to war without the approval of Congress.
Here's what we do know, though: U.S. Special Operations forces currently operate in no less than 134 countries. That's basically 2/3 of the world. And where is the CIA operating? Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, probably under your bed ... all the best places.
The disappointing reality is that despite all the reassuring talk from Trump about ending U.S. meddling abroad, it's highly unlikely anyone in elected government is capable of reining in the CIA.
It's important to remember that conventional warfare has along ago been retired as the go-to method for American power projection. We live in an age of shadow wars, a time when wag the dog tactics are used to whip up western support for terrorist proxy armies. The world is upside down. And the CIA is largely to blame for it.
We welcome fewer military adventures (and would be ecstatic if they ended all together), but an isolationist foreign policy is close to meaningless if the CIA is allowed to continue to operate with total impunity.