Good post. Reading about cia in the 1960s, wondering how the People could ever control international spy-intelligence agencies ever, if run in secret and filled with fallible human beings.
Maybe part of it is we believe less in God..? I don't mean you, of course. But you raise a great point.
There are a bunch of good reasons to attack Iran. There have been for quite a long time. I was just a little kid forming my earliest memories, but I still remember when they first started in with that, "Day 3 --America held hostage!" news opener. And thusly it continued for 444 days.
I really, really want to trust the CIA/NSA/FBI. Yet how can I now..?
It's like driving down the highway at full speed and someone in the back seat keeps insistently putting their hands over your eyes. How can you conduct diplomacy and act rationally like that..? You're going to crash.
I no longer watch TV news but nowhere have I heard the point brought up:
SpyGate was serious enough a month ago, but now that we're perched on the edge of a shooting war, why is no one accelerating the vital job of getting rid of the intel non-professionals who got us into this intel pickle in the first place...?
Information is an intangible but we can't do without it. Having an intel apparatus headed up by unethical people who regard themselves as their own country with us just living in it means we can't use the product they are paid to deliver.
Can you imagine the US military calling up and saying, no defense for you today, we're all sold out..? Or, even if you're completely healthy, imagine the hospital doing that; it doesn't feel good.
That's we're we are with intel right now.
I hear no one saying we have to speed up cleaning out intel because we're about to get into an armed conflict and we need to see the road ahead clearly.
No one is pushing the hands away.