3 CIA Station Chiefs in Baghdad since Smirk's aircraft carrier act

[donsu]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/7998022.htm

CIA fires Baghdad station chief

AFGHANISTAN FACILITIES ALSO CLOSED AS AGENCY STRUGGLES TO GATHER DATA

Confronting problems on critical fronts, the CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there, and has closed a number of satellite bases in Afghanistan amid concerns over that country's deteriorating security situation, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

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The CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in agency history, eclipsing the size of its post in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said. But sources said the agency has struggled to fill a number of key overseas posts.

-snip-

There is such a shortage of Arabic speakers and qualified case officers willing to take dangerous assignments that the agency has been forced to hire dozens -- if not hundreds -- of CIA retirees, and to lean heavily on translators, sources said. The agency has also had to use soldiers for tasks that CIA officers normally perform, sources said.

Even without the personnel challenges, Iraq and Afghanistan are seen as so dangerous that it is difficult for agency officers to venture outside guarded districts and compounds without security details, making covert meetings with informants extremely difficult, sources said.
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all is not as it seems

they can't venture out of their boxes yet they have Laden surrounded and on the brink of capture?

[diamond14]

1. bushies are ENCOURAGING Americans to open businesses in

Iraq and Afganistan...recently heard a C-span broadcast from the National Press Club in DC...touting business opportunities in Iraq

totally amazing... it seems bushies just PR the whole thing and believe that makes it TRUE....innocent Americans are lured into bushies Iraq snare and may not get out with their lives...it is real nasty stuff, paid for by OUR taxes...

[zbdent]

2. Let's encourage the people who believe that outsourcing the jobs

to other countries to enlist in going over and acting as human bomb shields, er, employees for highly visible American-owned businesses in Iraq.

Yah, I can just see the lines forming now.