Very surprised people forgot this one:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgkv37_hole-in-the-world-eagles_music

My thanks again to you, Tim, and to the entire FDL community…and if you haven’t become an FDL Member, please do so!

It helps if you trade arms for hostages…I hear that gets you a prime-time show. :)

people shouldn’t fear their governments, governments should fear their people. :)

My sincere thanks to all!

Multiple Presidents from both parties have used the CIA to overthrow governments and assassinate those the USG wanted out of the way. Weiner’s book (“Legacy of Ashes”) does a pretty good job of chronicling that part of the CIA’s history. The current Oval Office occupant has certainly not shied away from using the CIA for such missions.

It would help if we had a President who did not start his administration by urging us to “look forward, not back.” Accountability–electoral and legal–is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. We do not have such a functioning democracy today. I like to tell people that while we may be living in “The United States of America” we long ago ceased living in “The Republic of the United States of America.” Accountability must be restored to our institutions–executive branch, Congress, and the judiciary. It’s up to us to do it.

Yes, Halabja is a name that will live in infamy in the twisted annals of the history of chemical warfare. Absolutely hideous what was done to the people of that city.

Lindh wasn’t AQ, but with the Taliban, I believe. Bin Laden and his inner circle are extremely adept at practicing operational security; it’s the reason they’re still at large almost 10 years after 9/11.

That’s a good one! :)

One of my favorite topics. On balance, yes, I think the prior agency connections are a clear source of bias/reluctance to really take on the IC. I don’t think prior IC service should be a disqualifier–I just think that anyone who is going to serve on the staff of the House or Senate Intelligence Committees should have to convincingly demonstrate that they have a real commitment to aggressive, probing oversight…and above all an absolute commitment to ensuring the rule of law prevails.

They are absurd. If I put the text in front of a judge and showed him/her what was already in the public domain, they would (I would hope) laugh the CIA out of court. Sometimes I think the folks at the Publication Review Board (that’s what the book censor component is called) feel like they have to go after something in your book in order to justify their salaries. :)

Indeed. And of course, we have our own “Abu Ghraib East” right here in Virginia. Manning’s confinement conditions and treatment are Guantanamo-like.

Yes. I could potentially litigate over them, which I’ve not ruled out.

You are preaching to the choir on that one, my friend. I’ve said for years that if we lifted the legal restrictions on what companies like DigitalGlobe and GeoEye can orbit in terms of sensor resolution and eliminate the classification of electro-optical platform-derived data, you’d inject a vastly greater amount of competition into the business. Platform quality would improve and come down in price. More product would be available to federal customers. Taxpayers would save money.

What I also remember about that episode is how not a single Senator–not one–went after Bush/Rumsfeld for spearing Shinseki like a frog. #gutless.

Last year, we collected in excess of 1 million hours of video footage from overseas via the drones. More than 1 million hours. Who can possibly look at all of that and make sense of it? And even if you manage to automate some or much of the process, you still need trained analysts involved in sorting out what’s usable from what isn’t. We are reaching the point–actually, we’ve probably passed it–where we’re collecting far, far more that we can intelligently exploit and use.

Passed the House but not the Senate, last year.

That’s a tough one. The only way we’re ever going to get the kind of real-time, reliable intel on terrorist groups like AQ is if we can actually infiltrate them–a very, very tough proposition when they are holed-up in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. We clearly are getting some usable intel from SIGINT, less so (in my view) from IMINT. We simply do not have enough people in this country who’ve come from that region and who can thus at least have a chance of better blending in and potentially penetrating AQ…and AQ knows we’re trying.