Notes From Minneapolis

Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse on TomDispatch.com

Add this all together and you have the grim face of “intelligence” at war in 2010 — a new micro-brew when it comes to Washington’s conflicts.  Today, in Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war “in the shadows” (as they used to say in the Cold War era).  This is no longer “intelligence” as anyone imagines it, nor is it “military” as military was once defined, not when U.S. operations have gone mercenary and native in such a big way.  This is pure “lord of the flies” stuff — beyond oversight, beyond any law, including the laws of war.  And worse yet, from all available evidence, despite claims that the drone war is knocking off mid-level enemies, it seems remarkably ineffective.  All it may be doing is spreading the war farther and digging it in deeper.