Usually when we get information about black programs it's the result of two or more errors on the part of Congressmen. One will give a budget for a certain area, another will describe black ops as a percentage of that number, and then we get the actual figure. This time thanks to Edward Snowden we get a 178 page report that ended up in the hands of the Washington Post.
That figure of $52.6 billion is eye catching, since it's roughly equal to that of the State Department's whole operating budget. Also interesting that it's doubled in the last eight years, while Congress forced an 18% cut on the State Department in 2011. This has been widely viewed as a method to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential chances in 2016, no matter what the cost to the U.S. might be in the mean time.
I've written about the State Department Witch Hunt over Benghazi, which we recently learned to be an effort by the far right fringe to disrupt and discredit the Obama administration, again without regard to what harm they might be doing to overall U.S. interests.
The executive branch faces a crapflood of, well … crap and our emaciated State Department faces an intractable problem in the Mideast, but the inability to get on top of issues has left the whole region sliding towards chaos. If you're an end of days nut that might seem like a good thing, but most Americans would prefer that we not get dragged into another quagmire.
I am disheartened by what I see. Winning elections matters little when a disloyal fringe abuse any gap they find in our government's checks and balances, dragging us one step closer to collapse with each passing day. Our isolationist tendencies are finally starting to kick in and that ought to be followed by some attention to economic development here at home, but if we end up with some regional conflagration in the Mideast we'll be forced to do something on the basis of longstanding alliances. This will be a triple down on the misadventures of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's being made to happen against the will of the majority of the American people.
