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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

The CIA is not an independent agency, they do as the ametican public tell them.

Wrong on both counts.

The CIA has a blank check and does whatever the fuck they want. Much of it opposed by most Americans if they ever find out about it.

Congress and the president have oversight over anything they di. I din't see how "blank check" is relevant.

75 years of history disagree with you. Unless you believe the public told the CIA to arm the Mujahideen, overthrow Allende, invade Panama, recruit Nazis, traffic drugs - should I go on?

The public voted congress and presidents who run the cia into office so yeah,they did.

The only president of the last 80 years that has called for CIA oversight was JFK, who…

As for Congress, the idea that they know any more about the CIA’s activities than the average citizen is laughable.

They do know, they have oversight hearings regularly in a SCIF. As much as the CIA is romanticized, they can get in big trouble if they go rogue. They also have inspector generals for stuff like this and brief the president daily. The president can fire anyone in the CIA technically. Whil conspiracy theories sound cool and spooky let's stick to evidence unless you simply don't want blame for wars and chaos your voting causes. And that boys and girls is one more reason why I don't vote.

It's not a conspiracy theory, you just aren't reading the news. The Senate Intelligence Committee has stated that they weren't aware of the CIA's bulk data collection program until the public was. Did Congress authorize CIA intervention in Iran, Guatemala, or Nicaragua? Did Congress provide effective oversight of CIA torture in the Middle East? No, because they weren't even aware of it until 2009. Are you going to claim that all these instances are one-offs, or see them as signs of a systemic problem within our intelligence agencies?

The president was aware of the interventions in those countries and gave approval (if you remember the nicragua/contras scandal with raegan for example). I would like to think he is also briefed on their data collection but if they are like the NSA they went through DoJ for approval on any domestic collections but if they didn't they can be prosecutes and if they are not being prosecutes then blame your president who appointed and can fire the attorney general and the senators who approves the nomination. The only scenario voters are not responsible is if there is a "deep state" that operates outside of the democratic process and checks+balances.

Arming the Mujahideen sucessfully grinded the USSR and hastened its collapse, just as arming Ukraine would hasten Russia's disintegration. The plan was sound, however both of these strategies can backfire, as we've seen in the first case.

Disintegration was never the goal, just like with vietnam and china the goal is containing and preventing their territorial expansion. It is a lesson learned the hard way with hitler and poland.

Even knowing now about al-qaeda and 9/11, arming and training mujahideen in afghanistan was not a mistake.

Ukraine having just applied for NATO membership, I would say you are comparing apples and oranges. Even the muslim NATO member Turkey that is hostile against the US despite the US giving them nukes hasn't backfired.

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