The current battle going on between the CIA and Judicial Watch over pictures of Osama bin Laden’s dead body illustrates the reason why informed members of the American public don’t trust their government or its agencies.
The CIA says the pictures of the dead bin Laden are classified which puts them outside the bounds of the freedom of information act, but when questioned as to why the pictures are classified they come up with the lame reasoning that publication of said pictures might inflame fanatic elements that exist in Muslim countries. Do they mean like the bodies of dead kids that we like to call collateral damage, killed during our attempts to eliminate their occasionally terrorist parents?
No wonder the CIA didn’t know the Berlin wall was coming down, until the bricks were shipped to Langley. They live in a world where there is no connectivity of logical thought, no cause and effect.
Yes, the sight of the bullet hole in bin Laden’s head could excite many of the less stable elements in the Muslim world but so can a woman passing by with her eyeballs uncovered, so why worry about such mundane details or such irrational elements. We cannot adjust our lives and our actions to suit the mentality of a group of barely sane, religious fanatics. This goes for fundamentalist Christians’ as well as jihadist Muslims.
If we really want to keep the animals in their pens, the best way to do it is to stop murdering innocent people in overkill attempts to blot out a few nasty leaders of the terrorist cells. But that’s not the point. The point is that here in our own country we have fallen under the yoke of an intelligence and security bureaucracy that is its own reason for being. Sure it occasionally does some good but considering the size and cost to the taxpayer, it’s methods and current structure is at best questionable. Just check out the Boston bombing.
When interrogated as to why the bin Laden pictures were classified and how they got that classification no one seems to be able to give a clear answer. This is, in fact, true of most information that falls into the government’s classified categories
The reality is that some bureaucrat makes a decision, usually based on personal prejudice or outright fear that if he makes the wrong decision he won’t get his next promotion, and that’s that. The decision to classify the video that Bradley Manning released of the chopper crew mowing down women, children and a couple of reporters was made for obvious reasons. We don’t want the public knowing the reality of war. We don’t want the world to see heinous war crimes being perpetrated by our soldiers, but why do we classify toilet paper shipments? And why do we keep them classified for years and years. Does someone at Langley think that the regularity of our armed force’s bowel movements are of consummate importance to our enemies?
An Al Qaeda commander turns to his assistant. “They used twenty cases more this month than last, They must all have the runs. Now is the time to attack.” I wonder how many guys at Langley are working on this scenario and how many are over ordering the toilet paper just to lure al-Qaeda into a trap?
In fact, it is this kind of, Saturday Night Live behavior, being displayed by all of our vast intelligence bureaucracy and most of our military and police forces that is the cause of the widening gulf between the American public and its government. Sure a useless congress carries its fair share of the load, but the intelligence community is a runaway winner in the psycho-dysfunctional derby. I mean, it’s clear that congress doesn’t do squat, but that pales before NSA sticking its nose and all its electronic equipment into our homes, our bedrooms and our bathrooms and often as not, coming up with the wrong answers.