Downsizing Blues

What a pity. It seems that the CIA downsized most of its agents who specialized in torture, and is now finding it diffiuclt to ramp up its punishment and inquisition capabilities quickly enough. This London Observer article all about the behind-the-scenes intelligence war in Afghanistan is illuminating. Lots of background on the many different factions in Afghanistan and who’s allied with whom. And lots of James Bond-style shenigans, bags of money,

Obviously remembering how bad AOR unseated another of the Bush family’s black sheep, Noriega, in Panama a while ago, they are hoping more musical “entertainment” will do the same for their new apostate, Bin Laden. Some are more doubtful:

‘It’ll take more than light entertainment in bad Pashto to unseat Mullah Omar,’ said one Peshawar-based former Mujahideen leader last week.

This is the sort of in-depth reporting and hard facts journalism that is so incredibly lacking in American media. It’s really humbling that even some tabloids in Europe can have more analysis and news than what pretend to be “intelligent” American newspapers. I think part of it is a reluctance to engage people with “difficult” issues, part of it is due to cost cutting and a simple lack of journalists, and part of it is a generation of journalists for whom news gathering is reading the wire dispatches on Yahoo.