Cheney ordered CIA to withhold information from Congress

[bascule]

Yes, it may be a larger issue, but it's not the one I wanted to talk about in this thread. You can start a thread to discuss Dick Cheney and his link to counterterrorism if you want. This one is about congressional notification of secret intelligence. Thanks.

 

Ok! Well here's a thread to discuss this aspect of the story:

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/11/cheney.surveillance/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

 

Congress was never briefed on a still-cloaked-in-mystery CIA counterterrorism program, under orders from Dick Cheney.

 

Is this right? Should at least one member of Congress know about these sorts of programs? I think so. How about you?

[GutZ]

Integrity apparently is not a useful trait to have when you are working for the government so no I don't think there should be any program that is not link to the public or an extension of the public.

 

I hate to treat the people behind the curtain like children but, if they act that way why I should I put my trust in them to do the right thing. If you keep throwing the ball against the wall I am going to take it away from you. With dick cheney's record he's like that problem child everyone hates. You can't trust to be alone for 2 minutes. Accountability is huge problem in politics. You don't really want public servants going out because some minor issues, same time you don't want to have people completely untouchable. I will admit that...the extremes of both sides are easier to gauge and implement. If you were to do it properly and have a functioning system in place it may slow down progress due to having to make those difficult decision on whether or not this person or that person did something that they should be accountable for.

 

Which leaves it up to the populous to put the right guys in power. The greatest thing politician have done in the last 20 years or so is to manipulate the public in think that they are those people. You can nearly flip a coin on each thing a candiate says and the odds of them following them through can be determined by that coin toss.

 

I think in these modern time we people need to adapt as well to the new political landscape and have a group that represent the needs and strong reasoning behind them. The average citizen has far too much going on to really be involved. Then again who says those people will keep their integrity, it doesn't pay nor does it make it easy for the person.

 

It's more a problem of every human being. We take the path of least resistance a lot more than we should. Then again maybe it because we realise the fight is just not worth it...I don't know.