Why I would have trouble working for the CIA...

I'm not anti CIA. I think they've done many questionable things over the years, but fundamentally I believe very strongly in American ideals and that in order to protect those ideas you absolutely must have an incredible intelligence network. And I think that the Agency, despite all the things they do horribly wrong, does a lot of things well. It is, after all, the kind of organization that you never hear the whole story and you're much less likely to hear what they do right than what they do wrong. And I mean that both practically as well as morally. After all, they are in the business of saving American (and allied) lives. They can hardly be blamed for Iraq - if the administration had listened to our intelligence we would have known that there were no WMD's to be found. Good intelligence is about the of preventing war...or at least making it as small scale as humanly possible. But zeal for the protection of American lives can lead and has led the Agency to do some monumentally stupid things. I fear that the War on Terrorism will lead us to make the same damn mistakes as we did in the War Against Communism. Namely, that we end up supporting whomever happens to have the resources to help up root out terrorists: fascist dictators bent on genocide to root out terrorists bent on killing us. Part of the problem is that the CIA is run by political appointees who take their cues from the administration. The pressure gets pushed down to the grunt-level zealots, who when there is any moral ambiguity rely on the old standards - ends justify the means. Only the means often make the ends impossible in the long run.

Anyway, sorry for the rant: here's a story from the LA Times that prompted it.

I'm in a writing mood. Look for more posts throughout the day. And by that I mostly mean, read them all at once cause you don't check the blog obsessively like I do.

-Peace, seriously. Warnie.