Porter Goss, the Director of the CIA, is either an idiot or a lying sack of shit. So much for a slow build up to a point, eh?
Not that anyone (other than Bush) thought that he was a brilliant choice to head the CIA. Hell, even he admitted as much: "I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified." (March 3, 2004)
Now he has a chat with Good Morning America, and comes out looking like an utter moron.
"What I wish I knew more about now was how to penetrate into some of the sanctuary areas…They can be in harsh terrain that is hard to manage or they can be in the heart of the city, in a ghetto or slum area where people don't regularly go."
“People”? What people don’t regularly go into “the heart of a city”, or a ghetto? Wealthy people? Because I’m pretty damn sure that many, many people, all over the world, live in “slum area[s].” And Goss is saying that not one CIA agent can infiltrate those high-security complexes? Are they afraid of being mugged? Or is Goss admitting that CIA agents can’t figure out bus schedules?
Are our intelligence agents limited to infiltrating suburban, middle- and upper-class neighborhoods? Or is every foreign city a ring of inhabited areas surrounding a dystopian core of burned-out buildings collapsing into toxic sewers, crawling with scavengers? Does the head of the CIA know anything about the rest of the world?
"We know a great deal more about bin Laden, Zarqawi and [bin Laden aide Ayman] Zawahiri then we're able to say publicly," Goss said. He said the men had not been found "primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them."
Brilliant: “We know where they are.”
“So, where are they?”
“We can’t tell you.”
“So…you don’t really know.”
“We do know!”
“OK, where are they?”
“Uh…do you know?”
“No, that’s why I’m asking.”
“If you don’t know then I can’t tell you.”
And so on. The CIA has managed to master Playground Logic.
Oh, and “we haven’t found them because they don’t want us to find them.” No kidding? So, Goss is saying that hiding is the best way to ensure that other people won’t find you. Holy crap! Who would have guessed? Hey, let’s try leaving plates full of delicious cupcakes all across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Everybody loves cupcakes! That’ll lure them out of their caves, or tenements, or overpriced downtown studio lofts.
“…I define torture probably the way most people would — in the eye of the beholder," he said. "What we do does not come close because torture in terms of inflicting pain or something like that, physical pain or causing a disability, those kinds of things that probably would be a common definition for most Americans, sort of you know it when you see it, we don't do that because it doesn't get what you want.”
At least he’s right about torture being ineffective. But “eye of the beholder”? That’s just a wee bit loose as a definition, isn’t it? Do you just increase the voltage until the person starts screaming, and then it’s torture? That’s a perfect example of the idiotic lack of leadership that ends up with low-ranking soldiers on trial for torture. You cannot say “Do whatever you want, as long as you, personally, don’t think that it’s technically torture.” That’s bullshit: Utter and complete bullshit. You set rules, you say what can and what most definitely cannot be done to prisoners, and you damn well enforce them. To go on national TV and say something that asinine shows an incredible lack of responsibility, and shows that Goss does not regard this issue with the seriousness that it deserves.
And I didn’t realize that we were taking polls to define torture. Maybe we’ll get to vote on what is and is not torture. Sometimes it’s best not to assume what “most Americans” would agree with. Maybe, somewhere in Washington, D.C. or its immediate area, he could find some doctors, or human rights experts, or ex-POWs who were themselves subjected to torture, and ask their views on the subject.
"We're fighting a war on terror," he said in response to a question about the prisons. "We're doing quite well. Inevitably, we're going to have to capture some terrorists and inevitably they're going to have to have some due process. It's going to be done lawfully."
Nice to know that we’re “doing quite well.” Are we almost done, then? “Inevitably” they’re “going to have to have some due process.” Quite the burden, isn’t it? That whole due process thing? But at least everything will be done lawfully. Maybe not now, or even soon, but at some undefined point in the future, things will be done lawfully. So please stop concerning yourselves with this issue.