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Charlie Wilson's War

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by novelist_wannabe, Dec 25, 2007.

Page 5 of 8
  1. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Ned Beatty was pretty good, too, but I can't watch him without thinking of Deliverance.
     
    Moderator1, Dec 26, 2007
    #49
  2. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Don't feel like responding to your editorializing. I know why the Boland Amendment was passed. Reagan was too aggressive at times with covert operations in the way that Carter was an absolute pansy who neutered the CIA. As for the "proof" you always demand, regarding what Carter did to the CIA... Just read the book. Agree or disagree, but what I am saying isn't anything new. When Stansfield Turner took over as head of the CIA, he essentially neutered it. Carter's response to the intelligence scandals of the 70s was to go 180 degrees in the opposite direction and turn it into an ineffectual troop of boy scouts. With great fanfare, Turner was going to get rid of the "rogue operatives." This created an environment in which the CIA's most daring operatives were afraid of having their career's destroyed by carrying out missions Congress might later deem illegal. And it set back our intelligence operations decades because the CIA turned into a "cover your ass" operation. This carried over into the beginning of Reagan's administration. The lawyers were called in to parse everything every field station chief was even considering. In one example in the book, Avrokatos said that when he planned to begin planting anti-Soviet stories in the European press, an assistant secretary of state objected, claiming that the propaganda might bounce back and mislead Americans, in which case the CIA would be in violation of congressional laws that prohibit the CIA from operating inside the U.S. As ridiculous as that worry sounds, this lead to teams of state department and CIA lawyers in endless meetings debating whether the possibilities of this blowback were strong enough to deny the operation. To get weapons introduced in Afghanistan, Avrakotos resorted to Orwellian language to bypass the lawyers. From the book: " 'These aren't terrorist devices or assassination techniques," he would inform his staff, "Henceforth these are individual defensive devices.' Sniper rifles were finally shipped out to the mujahideen, but only after Gust renamed them: "long-range, night-vision devices with scopes.' "

    If you don't think Carter neutered the CIA and put a bunch of lawyers in charge to find reasons why the organization couldn't operate the way it always had, so be it. You'd be hard pressed to find an actual operative who didn't live through it who saw it that way.
     
    The Big Ragu, Dec 26, 2007
    #50
  3. gandhithegreat

    gandhithegreat Guest

    Looks like it's time to fire up the 9/11 posts again.
     
    gandhithegreat, Dec 27, 2007
    #51
  4. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Well said GTC. Makes sense.
     
    Boom_70, Dec 27, 2007
    #52
  5. Fenian_Bastard

    Fenian_Bastard Guest

    Was OBL specifically a CIA asset?
    Probably not.
    Was the CIA aware of him when he first linked up with the Afghan jihad, which was a CIA asset?
    Probably.
    As for the contentions of Ragu, America's Librarian, I have read the book. Also several others. Avrokatos is, in every sense, a special pleader in this regard. Your whole post is armchair testosterone defending the CIA's right to operate as a rogue agency contrary to US law. (The concern about overseas propaganda blowing back into the US media was not that it "might" do that, but that it already HAD, repeatedly, over the previous 30 years, and it had done so because that was what the CIA had wanted it to do. As Tim Weiner points out in his excellent and judicious Legacy of Ashes, it was the CIA's daring rogue operatives who led the agency into its most catastrophic blunders, and who then employed (Illegally) the black arts of tradecraft to cover their asses. It wasn't anything Jimmy Carter or Frank Church did that made the CIA bungle the greatest intel operation in its history -- the ongoing collapse of the USSR -- it was bureaucratic inertia and a complete failure to police itself. The same institutional flaws that allowed the CIA to feed LSD to its own people in the 1950's allowed it to miss Ames for all those years, and to overestimate the strength of a dying state, over and over again.
     
    Fenian_Bastard, Dec 27, 2007
    #53
  6. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Benazir Bhutto dead. Hope she got to see Charlie Wilson's wars in past few days. What a effed up part of the world. These people are nuts.
     
    Boom_70, Dec 27, 2007
    #54
  7. BigDog

    BigDog Active Member

    I am certain that by midday, Bush will be personally responsible for Bhutto's assassination ... in the minds of our resident crazies.
     
    BigDog, Dec 27, 2007
    #55
  8. novelist_wannabe

    novelist_wannabe Well-Known Member

    She was OK. Legs looked good in the one pool scene I remember (I know, sounds sexist, but sex played a significant role in the movie). I wouldn't call her performance anything other than adequate. Her role was in some ways akin to Nicholson in A Few Good Men (largely external force driving the main characters), though not nearly as good. Nobody'll be quoting her lines like we throw around "You want me on that wall."
     
    novelist_wannabe, Dec 27, 2007
    #56
  9. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Better than Philadelphia.... Big ... Sleepless in Seattle.... Apollo 13?

    Wow.
     
    Simon_Cowbell, Dec 27, 2007
    #57
  10. GuessWho

    GuessWho Active Member

    Haven't seen it but will. Texas Monthly was less than enthusiastic about it, though:

    http://www.texasmonthly.com/2008-01-01/hollywoodtx.php
     
    GuessWho, Dec 27, 2007
    #58
  11. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Wonder if Ole Charlie ever had some Bhutto?
     
    Boom_70, Dec 27, 2007
    #59
  12. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    I haven't seen the movie but am very interested. I heard this story on NPR a while back, on Terry Gross's Fresh Air. I believe this is the link

    http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=14-Dec-07
     
    Gold, Dec 27, 2007
    #60
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