US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8164

On July 24 2017 09:59 Adreme wrote:
The thing that makes it hard to talk about CIA conspiracies is that they are often times saner then the actual things the CIA is on the record as to having done.

On July 24 2017 11:06 Buckyman wrote:
The biggest left-wing conspiracy theory I've seen is that the big oil companies knew all the conclusions of late 90s global warming climate science back in the 60s and all agreed to keep quiet about it. I only know this conspiracy theory exists because some of them filed a lawsuit alleging it.

On July 24 2017 06:26 KwarK wrote:
Is there anyone who argues that oil wasn't the reason for the US being involved in Iraq? That seems a very odd thing to call a conspiracy theory, to me it's like being told that the round earth theory is the conspiracy.

As far as I know, the conspiracy theory is that people wanted to get rich off of oil/war and so Bush blew up the WTC to get some kind of pretext. That's the theory, and one that I don't subscribe to obviously.

But regarding America's interests in Iraq, that's oil. And pretty much only oil. Not sand, not holiday properties, not historical relics for Hobby Lobby, oil. America is in Iraq for oil. There are plenty of great countries around the world with shitty regimes that the US would love to have better regimes. The reason the US doesn't regime change those countries, and does regime change Iraq, is because Iraq has oil and oil security is a critical geopolitical interest of the United States.

Whenever I hear someone going "open your eyes, we're in the Middle East for oil, the evidence is right there" etc I always get a little confused about what other explanation I'm meant to have subscribed to which they think they're disillusioning me of. This whole exchange reminds me somewhat of this. Only in this case you'd be on the other side, insisting that NASA isn't run by the government

Same with the MIC. The theory basically asks me to believe that there are a number of very rich people who make their money off of government defence contracts and therefore lobby the government to give them defence contracts and create a need for defence contracts by increasing military involvement or hardware aid packages aid. The inverse sounds far more unbelievable, that the people who make guns go to their shareholder meetings and say "unfortunately it looks like this latest tragedy will result in record dividends and growth this year, let's all join hands and pray for peace".

On July 24 2017 09:59 Adreme wrote:
The thing that makes it hard to talk about CIA conspiracies is that they are often times saner then the actual things the CIA is on the record as to having done.

On July 24 2017 15:35 semantics wrote:

The CIA does not operate with-in the US, that's the fundamental issue with most of those conspiracy theories. CIA does not run opts on US soil because it would be a sticky legal situation. Moral issues aside. Really many of those conspiracy theories just need to change CIA to NSA and they'd have a better argument for inside the US opts

On July 24 2017 15:38 KwarK wrote:

The CIA very much does operate within the US. It shouldn't, but it does.

On July 24 2017 16:29 semantics wrote:

Name an operation that targeted a place on US soil. Because I know of none while the NSA has done plenty.

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency, CIA, and Department of Defense are all engaged in intelligence activities on U.S. soil

Did the onetime Washington outsider in fact hide agency secrets that might still rewrite the history of the assassination? Even the CIA is now willing to raise these questions. Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.

According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.

Last month, the CIA deepened its ties to the NYPD. It sent one of its most senior spies to New York to work out of police headquarters, on the CIA payroll. He is a special assistant in the intelligence division but U.S. officials said he is not doing intelligence-gathering. His name remains classified.

On July 24 2017 11:25 mozoku wrote:

I think your confusion might be because you're assuming a more reasonable meaning to what the guy is saying than what he actually meant.

The most prominent conspiracy theory I used to hear involving the Iraq War and oil was that the US was going to drill it themselves when they were done invading.

You don't hear that one anymore because it didn't happen. But it was a popular one at the time.

And I don't share your resoluteness in the belief that the US is only in Iraq for oil anyway. During the Cold War, I would have agreed and it made sense for national security purposes then. Nowadays, the US reasons for being in the Middle East (including Iraq) are primarily counterterrorism-related.


Yeah, I think that's reasonable and I agree with you. Conspiracy theorists argue that the "MIC" (which as you've defined is the same old lobbying that every under industry does so idk why it gets own scary name) is bamboozling the US into starting wars by itself though.

You have to be a pretty big buffoon to believe that imo.

On July 24 2017 18:41 Simberto wrote:
Crazy CIA stuff on US soil?

The classic is MKULTRA