Panetta Turns Blind Eye to CIA Crimes

[unhappycamper]

Panetta Turns Blind Eye to CIA Crimes
by Sherwood Ross | January 19, 2010 - 9:49am

In a tribute to the seven CIA agents killed December 30th by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, Agency Director Leon Panetta wrote, "Our officers were engaged in an important mission in a dangerous part of the world."

What he neglected to tell readers of the Washington Post, the Juneau Empire, the Monterey Herald and other mainstream publicity outlets is that CIA agents, like the United States itself, have no business in that part of the world. The U.S. is only in Afghanistan because eight years ago it launched a war of aggression against that small country and occupied it. Now Panetta is distressed as militants there strike back at the occupiers -- occupiers who are breathing life into a crooked, dishonest, Kabul regime whose stellar achievements are dope-peddling and vote-stealing.

Panetta also failed to tell readers that, if not for such CIA actions as the violent overthrow of the government of Iran in 1953 to get that country's oil, and the 2003 U.S. aggression against Iraq to get that country's oil, the Middle East might not be quite so violent today. Those aren't Boy Scout camps President Obama is reinforcing in Afghanistan.

Panetta begins his article of January 13th, "CIA Victories Come At A Cost," by playing on the sympathy of American readers. He opens with the words, "The horrible news on Dec. 30 that a suicide bomber had taken seven American lives in Afghanistan may have been, for some, a stark reminder that we are at war." All well and good as we recall John Donne's famous line "Any man's death diminishes me" and we grieve for the loss of those men and their suffering families.

But Panetta admits in his own words, "In the past year we have done exceptionally heavy damage to al Qaeda. That's why the extremists hit back." Got that? It is extremism for al Qaeda to hit back but it is not extremism for the CIA to launch its drone aerial rocket strikes against al Qaeda -- assassination strikes that a protesting Pakistan government has urged the U.S. halt as they are killing innocent civilians, in aggregate probably in the hundreds.


Rest of article at: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/26165



unhappycamper comment: The CIA has gotten exactly one thing correct since its inception in 1947. One. Thing.

Read "Legacy of Ashes" to find out what it was.