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The CIA

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 6:59 pm
by Eric Renderking Fisk
Before I hammer out this article about John Brennan and how he's not worthy of our tears, is there anything you believe I should know about him and share with our readers?

Re: The CIA

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:49 pm
by n11pilot
I have to admit upfront that I have mixed feelings about the Agency in general. I have worked with organizations that have two pet names for the CIA. "The Klingons" since they are empire builders in the inter agency sense, and the "Chinese Village" because you can stretch Langley out to Laang Lee.

OK, now that my bias is exposed there are three main things to consider about MR Brennan's intelligence career. In 1996 he was CIA Chief of Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Either do to not having enough HUMINT ears to the ground or for some unknown reason he and his station totally missed warning signs of the Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 US service members and wounded a further 500 individuals.

In 2009 MR Brennan freely admitted underestimating the abilities and intentions of a small group of Yemeni terrorists and their link to the now humorous "Underwear Bomber". This attempt is funny in that it failed but had it succeeded many human lives would have been snuffed out in the skies over America.

There is also some question in his part in the Obama administrations drone program that sought to eliminate Al Qaeda. The then administration sought to damage the terror organization by using a drone campaign. This was attractive since it required "No boots on the ground". Unfortunately despite Brennan's claims to the contrary often the targets eliminated by the drone strikes were not the intended targets. While the intent was to target cadre leadership many times unknown persons were killed and at other times very low level terror operatives who were touted as key leadership. Brennan over estimated the efficacy of the drone attacks but military sources said they were most times 7% effective in eliminating the intended target.

Re: The CIA

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:15 pm
by Eric Renderking Fisk
https://thefedorachronicles.com/rants/2 ... y-CIA.html

So this morning I was caught off guard. I was under the impression that one of the people who brought up the idea of sticking up for John Brennan actually knew what she was talking about... or that she had some idea who John Brennan is and what he actually did over the past couple of years. Turns out, what this woman did was subscribe to the "Make Believe Outrage Of The Day" created by the media.
Hey everybody, guess what we're going to pretend to be angry about today! Mean, nasty Trump is going after an honorable man, John Brennan! Everybody remembers what a good guy John Brennan, the former CIA director who 'took out' Bin Ladin! Now you need to take to social media and pretend to be outraged about this. Can you say 'manufactured outrage?' I knew you could!
It took me all of 15 minutes to find more and read more than six articles about John Brennan and why he's not worthy of us crying... I actually started to laugh when I read the articles about John Brennan's CIA program TO SPY ON THE SENATE!

No, really - go do a Google search of the phrase "Spying on Senate" and tell me what results are found.

[After you come back from seeing the results]

The only conclusion I can draw on this issue this morning is that it's so hard to take people seriously. These people are outraged because they're told to be outraged by the media, either by MSNBC or FOX News.

And now I feel embarrassed for wasting my time trying to engage one of these phony outragers because I thought she was at least a little informed. A mistake I'll make again soon, I'm sure.

Re: The CIA

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 5:26 pm
by n11pilot
This is just my opinion but in looking at the career of MR Brennan I am getting the impression that he is the modern equivalent of the Civil War era political general. These generals were men with no particular military skill, and no discernible tactical ability but still achieved high rank due to political connections and implied quid pro quo. Predictably, putting such men in charge of large bodies of soldiers was disastrous for those troops and the Republic.

I freely admit that there are aspects of Brennan's career that aren't visible to the public but what open source material there is on him does not point to a man who is especially skilled at intelligence work. He does seem however to be masterful at playing political games and catering to the whims of those who can progress his career. In my opinion making Brennan DCI was a mistake that did not benefit the intelligence community or the nation very much but probably proved very useful to the man who appointed him.