[tptacek]

What do the people writing these kinds of comments think the CIA is? There are mustache-twirling villains there, in greater proportion than in other government organizations, but the median CIA employee sits at a desk and translates cables from Farsi to English and back again, or keeps track of the rainfall in Azerbaijan. A very small fraction of the agency does anything more "interesting" than that, and the majority of people there perform functions that every government in the world also performs.

[wedog6]

It's not about mustache twirling villains though is it. There are also a large number of people there who sit at desks and handle the logistics of moving people who are entitled either to be treated as PoWs or to a fair trial, into countries where they can be tortured while preserving a facade of it not being done by the agency itself.

[tptacek]

Just have the courage of your convictions and extend this logic of culpability to everybody who works for the United States Government. Otherwise, it just sounds like you don't understand that a huge fraction of the work of intelligence is preventing wars.

I don't think the CIA is broadly a force for good. I think that the presumption that most people working there are evil is unfounded, though. It's a huge organization with a big portfolio, most of which isn't telegenic or activating.

[Herring]

That’s true of every criminal org. Enforcers are usually a small percentage of the population, because they are fundamentally businesses. Violence is "expensive" in terms of heat from law enforcement, lost revenue, lower internal stability, etc.

You don’t need to defend it with weak arguments. If you feel like you do, that is a bigger issue, maybe talk to your local therapist or priest.

[the_af]

It's very hard to understand what you're arguing though.

You agree the CIA is not "broadly a force for good" (which I consider a big understatement). You also don't seem to disagree it's an organization whose activities involve, among others, torture, assassinations, extraordinary renditions, psyops, etc. Yes, sometimes to "prevent wars", other times to incite wars or to topple governments they don't like, or to help crush down rebellions they don't like, or to help rebellions they do like.

So why this fixation on pointing out that the majority of CIA analysts are pencil pushers and not directly involved in unsavory activities? They still enable them. And they willingly work for this organization, why make excuses for them just because some of them are nerds who wear a suit and don't personally torture anybody, and instead translate Farsi or Chinese?

As a reminder, this is the comment to which you're reacting:

> The guy trying to work for the psychological torture club got psychologically tortured a little? My heart bleeds for him

I mean, the comment is right. This guy in TFA did willingly belong to a psychological torture group, even if he's not directly involved in this particular activity. It's ok for us to react at the irony of the situation, that he feels tortured by the polygraph, given the organization he belongs to. They didn't even physically touch him, yet he felt "abused".

I'm sure you understand the slippery slope of comparing the CIA to all of the US government is just not right.