therelevantrhino

When I think of Diane Feinstein, the word that comes into mind is “enabler”. For those of you who don’t know what this word means, I’ll give you a moment to look it up and find out for yourself, as I don’t want to be an enabler.

Done? Good.

Thing is, friends and neighbors, your ol’ Rhino knows a bit about intelligence gathering. One of the things I learned throughout my years of obtaining information from sources unwilling to give any is that there are easy ways and im-fucking-possible ways to get what you want. We’ll briefly discuss them now, savvy?

Easy : Make a friend. Nobody tells secrets to strangers; particularly if they’re a. new to town(or for that matter, country), b. colored differently, or c. don’t speak their language. Is this making sense so far? Gawd I hope so… Anyhoo, once you’ve established a friendship, it’s easy to find out what people know.

Easy: If you can’t make a friend, make an enemy.  If you work in the intelligence community, and you need to find out where an arms shipment is headed, roadside bombs are being planted, etc., and the person you were reaching out to decides they can’t/won’t trust you, make them think you’ve set them up as a fall guy for his entire organization. This works well if you’re short on time. Most people involved in well established criminal/terrorist organizations are more afraid of retribution from their own than from you. A phone call/visit to the upper echelon takes place, and you snag your quarry.

Im-fucking-possible: Torture. Torture someone long enough, they’ll tell you that they and they alone are responsible for making Celine Dion famous (an act of terrorism nearly equal to any other). Every analyst agrees that torture nets you less reliable information than any other means of intelligence gathering. Not to mention it’s fucking reprehensible, and anyone involved in it’s use or authorization should be convicted of War Crimes.

Remember back oh, seven-maybe eight- years ago when our country abhorred torture? I fuckin’ do, and I’d like to see us get back to that whole “the United States of America doesn’t torture” thing. While Bush said we didn’t, Cheney said “you betcher ass we did/do/will for 14 more days, what the fuck are you gonna do about it?”. And they wrote legislation that clears the US of any wrongdoing/illegality in case it dawns on anyone with two fucking brain cells to rub together that they’re guilty as OJ of war crimes and oughtta be locked up for fucking ever.

Leon Panetta has been nominated to be the man to spearhead President Elect Obama’s “Just Say No” to torture program. As Director of the CIA, he would be the third man on the whole fucking ladder, behind the POTUS and Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair.

And people like Feinstein are pissed. She should be, as one of Bush’s key allies in the Senate for his authorization of spying on US citizens and green light for torture. When the toughest question you asked Porter Goss was, “What an interesting name…how did you come by it?”, then voted to approve both the telecom and torture bills, as well as confirm both Gen. Hayden and Goss to head up the Company, you should be pissed and scared.

And you should be labeled as an enabler.

Oh, huge congratulations to Sen. Al Franken (author of Lies [and the Lying Liars that tell them]: A Fair and Blanced Look At The Right). You didn’t just beat Norm Coleman, now get to use this phrase at least once a week,

“With all due respect to the Gentleman from Arizona, while it may be true that comedians can become politicians, it’s a terribly poor decision to attempt it the other way around.”

P.S. I realize I took an extra day. I swear I’ll make it up to you.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS