Revamping the CIA

I have been wondering why it is that the CIA always has a worse rep than their equivalent in other countries. All nations have spies, and all spying institutions sometimes misbehave. We got spy scandals in every democracy I have known in the last fifty years, It goes with secrecy that bad stuff is committed and that a few traitors are somehow generated. We got to keep both down best we can.

So there are scandals galore everywhere: how come the CIA is always the only bad guy in the news? I think it is cultural: Americans are raised to tell the truth, to talk in you face and go for a good fight: dissimulation is just not American. It is not true for the British, who have been raised in the complex heritage of Victorian times: all their education is about keeping to the weather, keeping a straight upper lip and all the restraints of the rules of good conduct. They may like a good fight too, but they understand the need for secrecy much better. As for the French, they have a large practice of double entendre and an unhealthy respect for the authority in place coupled with underlying rage: it is why they always leak information.

But of course we need our spies and they need to be respected. It is time to stop playing "I am a good person because I don't like the CIA". Maybe part of the bad stuff that happened at the CIA did so because they could not recruit in a net large enough. So all these people who felt too good for the CIA are to be blamed too.

It is time for the CIA to have a good image: it will help the institution inside and outside. They should spend a few million dollars on self-promotion. They battled Communism by supporting good anti-communist books, so they know the power of books, they should support themselves with good pro-CIA literature. The trouble with present CIA mystery novels is that they are based on the British model, and it does not quite "take" over here, except if the hero is British. The key, I think, is to put the accent on outsmarting. Let us leak some stories where we have been outsmarting bad guys (there must be leak-free stories, there always are) and pay some popular writers to enhance the CIA image.
I am getting tired of that constant criticism of the CIA: it is like walking on your own foot.

Torture useful?

All these gallons on water, and we do not know where is Osama Ben Laden.

Torture up close

People like me, born with WWII, have a different view of torture:it was in conversations so much that it was one of the first words you learned. I remember hearing of a man tortured by the Germans who was forced to count the whipping. It frightened me: I did not know very well how to count then, I must have been four years old. Then came Nurenberg: the American legal team said that torture was forbidden and that you were responsible for your own acts, even if your boss told you to torture somebody. The most awesome was that they did teach that to their own soldiers. Such was the American doctrine. This is why they hanged the main nazis and it is why I wanted to become an American.
In the following decades, most European countries did use torture, usually far away or just far enough from the mainland, in the colonies fighting for their independance (Algeria, Northern Ireland etc.)
When I worked with new colleagues or a new boss, the first question that came to my mind was would they betray me if there was a war? Would they betray you if you were a Jew? Most of them would, you learn to live with that. It is even worse with boyfriends. For anybody else, if a guy betrays you, he is just sleeping around; for me, he might send you to a gas chamber.
It is what happens to the mind of little girls in wartimes. I kept thinking: I want to die in America, where they do not torture anyone.
And finally my dream came true. Good thing I did not die last year.

Political lesbianism

Yesterday, Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) mentioned a congressman who said publicly that she was a cross-dressing lesbian. It made me laugh: for over 50 years, and I am now reaching 70, I have been a lesbian for all the men to whom I said no, and a whore if I happened to say yes. I thought this was specific of my generation, but it seems that we have now shifted from the general contempt for women to the ultimate political argument. Congratulations, congressman!

It does not say much about Miss Maddow, except that she is feared. It says a lot about the obscure ex-congressman Bob Ney (except that I did not infer that he ended up in jail): it tells me all about his age, his education and the quality of his heart.
HA! has-been congressman, you must have been a stud!

What is the excuse this time?

My neighbor is born in Claxton, a very small rural community in Georgia. This is a recent picture of hers: she is 93 years old and used to make a living as a hairdresser. She comes from a baptist very religious background, still goes to a nearby church every Sunday. She is a firm Republican.
YET
1) Whatever GA was 100 years ago, there is not a hint of racism in her.
2) She says that gay people should be left in peace because it is not their fault and it is nobody's business anyway.
3) She feels that you got to respect your country and your government, even if you disagree with the president.

And I wonder from under which rock crawled these guys who say that President Obama is Satan, that we should not teach in school the real age of the earth and that it is "dangerous" to announce that we want to treat other countries with respect!