Very cool. I'm glad these guys are getting recognition outside the walls. A couple other examples of memorials ...

NSA Cryptologic Memorial
source: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/memorial_wall/index.shtm l


CIA Memorial Wall
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Memorial_Wall


/not subby
//just don't fark with my Bill of Rights, guys.

Uncle Wiggly: Very cool. I'm glad these guys are getting recognition outside the walls. A couple other examples of memorials ...

[i1207.photobucket.com image 371x210]
NSA Cryptologic Memorial
source: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/memorial_wall/index.shtm l

[i1207.photobucket.com image 600x465]
CIA Memorial Wall
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Memorial_Wall


/not subby
//just don't fark with my Bill of Rights, guys.

ZOMG NSA memorial has a pyramid! *puts on tinfoil hat*

NSA Cryptologic Memorial:
So, are the names on that monument encrypted?

gwydion56: NSA Cryptologic Memorial:
So, are the names on that monument encrypted?

Known Only to God and the Guy Who Has the Key

Would not officially approve, if they officially existed.

My brother sat in an SR-71 on the ground. he couldn't tell any of us for 25 years.

We'll never know what we don't know. And we'll never know whether what we know is the truth.

the_colonel: whenIsayGO: jaytkay: I've been reading this book Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage (new window)

Thanks. I just finished The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M Aid. I like reading related books back-to-back, but yours doesn't appear to be available as an ebook, so I'll put it on my list and wait patiently for them to join the 21st century.

Y'all might like "Body Guard of Lies" by Anthony Brown. It's a detailed account of the use of ULTRA and deception plan for D-Day and the end of WW2. It can be kind of dry at times but is a great read.

You see this is why I support or at least understand France's surrender to the Nazis. Imagine how much more difficult the invasion of France would have been if the Nazis absolutely controlled all of France. Yes, that control would have diluted their strength in occupying every square inch of France but the Maquis and other underground units did amazing work in spreading false information about D-Day along with sabotage that prevented deployment of troops.

Bomb Head Mohammed: And what guarantee do we have that one of those stars on the 'they served in silence' wall aren't for some CIA guy who helped depose the democratically elected Mosaddegh ...

... it is more a condemnation of the idiots who will value their perhaps honorable but ultimately irrelevant service there as a pre-qualification for office - you know - sticking a guy with platoon commanding experience in charge of the budget rather than a sober technocrat. Heh.. that's a good word - technocrat. I wish america had any - not all, but some. My that would be a nice change.

Part of the problem with CIA is its success. How many Americans died in coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Paraguay (1954), Vietnam (1963), Chile (1973), Pakistan (1977)? Hundreds? If you introduce regular army, as we did after the French collapse in Vietnam, it rises to almost 60,000 dead.

The the question is why? Two reasons: protecting American industry (oil, sugar) and preventing the spread of communism. Spreading communism was a basic tenet of the Soviet state. We trace this back to, of course, Kennan's Long Letter, Churchill's Fulton, Mo. "Iron Curtain" speech and the Eisenhower era domino theory.

CIA was filled with little chess-playing Ivy Men who were always willing to sacrifice someone who didn't have an English accent. (See the un-even "Legacy of Ashes" for an account of the waste of human life in Eastern Europe.) They squandered life and they built silly toys and they did foolish things. The Church Committee did a great deal to reign this in, but it left CIA demoralized and it never recovered. The result are parallel private companies who work on a lucrative contract basis--in the same way that NASA and Defense operate.(Cofer Black and CIA alumni like him work on CIA's 'eighth floor' and are a skeleton key for companies like Blackwater.)

Private contractors are the technocrats. They are a form of civil servants. But we can always make the trains run on time. That's never the question. The question is making the trains run and still running our own lives.

And the military? Sure. We call everyone a hero even if they aren't. We do it because we don't have to fight that fight. But the military has a strong tradition of excellent leaders--sure, there are men who would make poor statesmen (Patton, MacArthur, Halsey, LeMay), but there are great ones (Marshall, Nimitz, Eisenhower, Clark, Petraeus). We trust the military for three reasons: Washington returned to Mount Vernon after his second term, Truman fired MacArthur and the military stays out of politics.

I come back to the great Churchill quote, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Uncle Wiggly: Part of the problem with CIA is its success. How many Americans died in coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Paraguay (1954), Vietnam (1963), Chile (1973), Pakistan (1977)? Hundreds?

How many people total died because of CIA actions? How many of those actions had any lasting effect except to sow ill will to the US?

Uncle Wiggly: Two reasons: protecting American industry (oil, sugar) and preventing the spread of communism. Spreading communism was a basic tenet of the Soviet state.

Communism is a self defeating philosophy, this was known in the early 1920's. A communist state is inferior to and will always fail against a capitalist state due to the economic calculation problem. Stopping communism is easy, you simply let it self destruct. Oh sure it can hobble along like the Soviet Union did by copying western prices, but it will eventually be destroyed by either economic collapse, Soviet Union, or the leadership having to allow market exchange to avoid that collapse, China.

Uncle Wiggly: CIA was filled with little chess-playing Ivy Men who were always willing to sacrifice someone who didn't have an English accent. (See the un-even "Legacy of Ashes" for an account of the waste of human life in Eastern Europe.) They squandered life and they built silly toys and they did foolish things. The Church Committee did a great deal to reign this in, but it left CIA demoralized and it never recovered. The result are parallel private companies who work on a lucrative contract basis--in the same way that NASA and Defense operate.(Cofer Black and CIA alumni like him work on CIA's 'eighth floor' and are a skeleton key for companies like Blackwater.)

OK, so now are you agreeing that these interventions were unnecessary and counterproductive? I'm wondering if you are actually agreeing with or disagreeing with Bomb Head Mohammed? Perhaps I am misunderstanding your post?

Uncle Wiggly: But the military has a strong tradition of excellent leaders--sure, there are men who would make poor statesmen (Patton, MacArthur, Halsey, LeMay),

MacArthur was an incompetent who got tens of thousands of his own men killed due to his poor leadership, both in WWII and in Korea, and nearly started WWIII. He should have been removed from command at best and left to the Japanese in the Philippines at worst.

Uncle Wiggly: I come back to the great Churchill quote, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Democracy is the worst form of government period, the founders recognized this, which is why the US is not a democracy, it is supposed to be a republic.

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. - James Madison

That's a really awesome idea, and I'm glad to see someone doing something like this. It's been half a century; there should be more acknowledgement of the people who gave their lives in that weird period known as the "Cold War".

Crosshair: Uncle Wiggly: Part of the problem with CIA is its success. How many Americans died in coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Paraguay (1954), Vietnam (1963), Chile (1973), Pakistan (1977)? Hundreds?

How many people total died because of CIA actions? How many of those actions had any lasting effect except to sow ill will to the US?

Thousands. I think the coups were a mistake because, like the drones now, they allow us to effect great change from a distance with minimal short-term consequence.

Uncle Wiggly: Two reasons: protecting American industry (oil, sugar) and preventing the spread of communism. Spreading communism was a basic tenet of the Soviet state.

Communism is a self defeating philosophy, this was known in the early 1920's. A communist state is inferior to and will always fail against a capitalist state due to the economic calculation problem. Stopping communism is easy, you simply let it self destruct. Oh sure it can hobble along like the Soviet Union did by copying western prices, but it will eventually be destroyed by either economic collapse, Soviet Union, or the leadership having to allow market exchange to avoid that collapse, China.

I agree. We can say that now, but from the 1950s it was powerful. The war against communism wasn't won by passive means. It was won by fighting it on these fronts and by grinding client states against each other along the fault lines. What were we supposed to do? Stand in the middle of the fire and say, "It will burn itself out" or "I think they can handle it themselves." And leftists saw socialism and communism as a natural evolution of capitalism. If it didn't work it was because it had never been allowed to work.

Uncle Wiggly: CIA was filled with little chess-playing Ivy Men who were always willing to sacrifice someone who didn't have an English accent. (See the un-even "Legacy of Ashes" for an account of the waste of human life in Eastern Europe.) They squandered life and they built silly toys and they did foolish things. The Church Committee did a great deal to reign this in, but it left CIA demoralized and it never recovered. The result are parallel private companies who work on a lucrative contract basis--in the same way that NASA and Defense operate.(Cofer Black and CIA alumni like him work on CIA's 'eighth floor' and are a skeleton key for companies like Blackwater.)

OK, so now are you agreeing that these interventions were unnecessary and counterproductive? I'm wondering if you are actually agreeing with or disagreeing with Bomb Head Mohammed? Perhaps I am misunderstanding your post?

I think some were unnecessary and counterproductive. I don't think you can make a blanket statement that all intervention is unnecessary, because the US has to defend its vital interests--which we now extend around the globe. But intervention is difficult to defend because CIA winds up with blood wicked into its J Press suits, and it just goes out and buys another--think the Shah, the death squads, South Vietnamese thuggery, and more recently, difficult to defend in light of the lack of a post-invasion strategy in Iraq, the ineptitude of the Bremmer administration and the salting of critical posts with Liberty University flunkies. What I objected to is the

Uncle Wiggly: But the military has a strong tradition of excellent leaders--sure, there are men who would make poor statesmen (Patton, MacArthur, Halsey, LeMay),

MacArthur was an incompetent who got tens of thousands of his own men killed due to his poor leadership, both in WWII and in Korea, and nearly started WWIII. He should have been removed from command at best and left to the Japanese in the Philippines at worst.

He was a great General but a poor statesman--think Inchon--and he knew how to cut a dashing figure, but Truman was right to fire him, and his short sightedness in Korea could have started World War III (there's a great quote from his Senate hearings I can't find.) He spent his life on station, oblivious to the rest of the world, and others paid that price (spindly Wainwright on the Missouri in Tokyo Bay). I call that group the pre-atomic generals because they should never have been trusted with nuclear weapons.

Uncle Wiggly: I come back to the great Churchill quote, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Democracy is the worst form of government period, the founders recognized this, which is why the US is not a democracy, it is supposed to be a republic.

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. - James Madison

In the 20th and 21st centuries, we use democracy and republic interchangeably. Madison was referring to Athens since he was one of the men who gave the US its compass.

Here's my point, and I am guilty of analyst-like dithering: we must deal with difficult foreign policy decisions everyday and we cannot solve them by either blanket statements or isolationist policy, and that's what I objected to.