CIA

I do not have any affection for the Soviet Union KGB, the Sicherheitsdienst (the Nazi intelligence service) or the CIA. In fact, I hate the CIA whether they are torturing prisoners in foreign jails, assassinating elected leaders, organizing inept missions to kill Fidel Castro, (bacteria in his favorite type of cigar, an exploding seashell, and a poisoned wet suit - There were 26 known attempts on the life of Fidel Castro) or dealing drugs to support Contra terrorists.

Rumors persist that the CIA aided the assassins of Che Guevara, orchestrated the overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973 and were responsible for the death of the Congo's Patrice Lumumba. CIA also encouraged plots that resulted in assassination of Dominican Republic President Trujillo, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 63 and Chilean Rene Schneider in 73. The most extensive assassination operation was Operation Phoenix conducted during latter part of Vietnamese war - according to Defense Dept official 26,369 South Vietnamese civilians killed under Phoenix while another 33,358 were detained without trial.

When not assassinating, these jerks are training others to do so - in the US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia. Graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America including torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians.

The Taliban and bin Laden were the creation of the CIA who in 1979 recruited the most vicious and radical fundamentalist fanatics from Saudi Arabia and other Arab and Muslim countries and utilized the enormous budget allocated by the US Administration to train, arm and finance them.

The spy aspect of the agency is ineffective and did not predict the 911 disaster or the fall of Russian communism. I don't care that Valerie Plame was outed - I think the whole outfit should be exposed for the criminals they are and the whole agency should be scrapped as it has shown itself to be useless and perhaps dangerous to the US - many of our problems are indeed "blowback" from CIA plots. Secret agencies are essential to totalitarian regimes, not honest democracies. I'm tickled that Tricky Dicky Cheney may yet be in trouble, but all of Bush's administration has claim to so many horrors that should have gotten them in deep doodoo long before this incident. Oh well, the media is a strange observer that concentrates on certain squirrels while the tiger slinks behind their backs.