Has the American CIA become too bloated and ineffective?

Now that we in the US are looking for ways to bring our fiscal house in order, it behoves us to look at how we can get a better and bigger bang for our buck.

The CIA has traditionally been an invisable money pit not subject to public scrutiny. Lacking public accountability and oversight one can only imagine the waste and abuse with in the CIA.

In recent years, good CIA intelligence has been spotty at best and probably very expensive. Is it time to rethink American intelligence operations? I think it high time Americans should be able to see what the CIA costs them every year. We are no longer fighting the cold war...apparently no one has yet informed the CIA. So there should be no reason to keep the entire agencies budget under raps. The CIA budget should at least be as transparent as the Pentagon's budget.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189777/cias-bureaucracy-problem/ishmael-jones#

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To bring are fiscal expenses in order we should look at the 3 biggest spenders that represent the majority of the national budget: Medicare (lets just make mandatory euthanasia for all sick people beyond 65 that can't pay for their healthcare), Social Security (Let put that money in the stock market so that it can all be lost in a stock market correction and then we can euthanasia old people simply because they can't care for themselves.) and the biggest of all the Military (we could cut it in half and no one would notice, fuck under Clinton it was cut nearly in half and that was the army Bush went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan on!) Anything else but those 3 is going to be a drop in the bucket.

Ultimately I would say military cuts and revising the tax code, but with the republicans in power that is not going to happen!

 

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How do we judge whether they are effective or not?

 

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Medicare and healthcare in general must be cut. The US government is the single largest buyer of healthcare services in the country. So we must bring our healthcare costs to be more in line with those found in other industrial countries.

Military spending must come under the knife as well. But it should be done surgically and given the poltics in Washington, I doubt that will happen. The CIA started out as a intelligence group for the president and for the president alone. I think it is high time that there be more transparency in the CIA.

When bueacracies are allowed to grow free from the light of public scrutiny, God knows what you actually get. And from what I have seen of the agency, I am not very impressed. Perhaps a tenth of it should be merged into the Defense Department intelligence network. We have all of these redundant intelligence agencies. I think there should be one intelligence agency that should rest in the Department of Defense.

 

Congress approves its budget every year. And the numbers have started to come out: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/28/us.spy.spending/index.html?hpt=T2

The USA spends about $80 billion on intelligence, which I think is patently ridiculous. Every indicator shows that the USA spends about 60% of the world's "intelligence" budget.

I think so.

I think it's ridiculous that the CIA can't recruit more bilingual agents. Countezero was just telling me how the CIA can't get past something like 10% polyglots. Pretty sad.

Actually, it's the Congress and the POTUS that need to be told. They have more control over the budget, and in fact, much of the money is force-fed the various agencies, the CIA included.

I agree. The DGSE, MI6/MI5 and other intelligence agencies of our allies get by with less than a tenth our amount. I don't think it should be cut that far, but I don't get why our spy agencies can't seem to recruit capable operatives.

~String

 

If the US began to reign in the numbers of enemies it creates through its misguided foreign policy over the last 20 years or so, and decided to make peace instead, it could easily cut the military and the CIA in a meaninful way and put the money into something useful like repirations, medical systems and education. Perhaps then we Brits could avoid being drawn into costly foreign wars and put the money into a civil construction programme to kickstart the economy. Good intelligence should be able to destroy the real enemies before it ever escilates into war - what the hell are they getting paid for? Pretty much complete failiure in the last 1/4 centuary. Maybe they can't recruit anyone because nobody intelligent would want to be associated with them!

 

It's a shambles. I can't say our MI5 is much better, but at least they act professionally even if they do nothing! They at least seem to keep thier foul-ups secret most of the time!

 

The funny thing is that you are judging the succsess of the CIA, from the view of the CIA's failures, items that become common knowledge, their successes we never know about, because for them to be successful and remain so, they must remain classified.

 

What success? The US was unable to avoid 3 consecutive wars, is flooded with drugs and illegal immigrants, is in a horrible recession, bankrupt to the Chinese and is politically paralysed...How could it get worse?

 

I thought the First Black President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, ended all this nonsense. Don't trouble my beautiful mind with this crap.

Wait, I got it. I blame republicans. Yeah. That's it. Republicans did it.

 

Haahaaha!!

 

Yeah, they apparently spend their time protecting al Qaeda assets and only give a fuck when those assets suddenly do something untoward. And WMD's? Where the fuck was the central unintelligence agency?
Bunch of usurpers, and that's not just my opinion.

Question, 3 wars? Clue me in? I can guess at two of them.

 

They haven't assassinated our Long-legged Mack Daddy yet. I'd say that's a big plus. Don't shoot our black savior until he's accomplished what he was sent by God to do.

 

We can lend you Margaret Thatcher - You always liked her over there..We cant stand her- Please take her, please..

 

Mmmm.. secrets.

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Margaret on the guillotine.

You can keep her, we prefer Morrissey instead.

 

Gulf 1, Gulf II and Afghan

 

Yeah, Dianna died on my birthday, 31st August - I'll never forget it. I was very upset.

 

Any theories as to what caused her to "accidentally" die on your bday? I know one thing is obvious, it wa'nt no ordinary car crash.

Why the hell can't you be a little more unreasonable?