An Obama success story

Theoretically this would reduce prison overcrowding and take power away from drug cartels

Legalize cocaine...problem solved.

Theoretically this would reduce prison overcrowding and take power away from drug cartels

Of course there's no way of knowing if this is true or not but I remember seeing an interview with a man who claimed to be a former CIA agent who admitted thard the CIA is responsible for most of the drug trafficking. It actually sounds plausible because the average American doesn't own any planes or boats[/QUOTE]


3 letter agencies being naughty?


1. "former CIA agent who admitted the CIA is responsible for most of the drug trafficking"
As you said, there is no way to be certain of this, and it also presents some other logic problems.

A. Without a lot of evidence and investigation, we simply don't know if his statement was true.And if there is evidence, I doubt the CIA will make it readily available...
to say the least, lol.

B. I don't think we can use the word "most"... because logically, there may not even be a way for us to measure that.

So whether they are involved or not, saying "most" requires us to have a lot of facts and numbers, which we're just never going to have.
Thus we can't logically use a word like "most", regardless of what is, or is not, going on.


2. "It actually sounds plausible because the average American doesn't own any planes or boats"
This statement is also a logical misstep:

A. what the "average american" has or doesn't have has nothing do with how drug traffickers are smuggling drugs... as I don't think we can categorize major drug traffickers as "average americans". In fact, they needn't be Americans at all.

B. Again, this is a statement that can't be proposed without actual data and facts: We'd have to assess how many boats and planes Americans actually own, and then how many are owned or operated by the CIA. Not only that, but you might find that normal Americans actually DO own a phenomenal number of boats... far more than all the government agencies put together.

So this statement has at least two main logical errors, and a number of smaller ones.


3. However, can we reasonably assert the CIA, or at least SOME INDIVIDUALS or SOME GROUPS within the CIA, have been involved to SOME DEGREE with drug trafficking in the past?
Yes.

There seems to be plenty of evidence from past situations like Iran/Contra, the General Noriega debacle, and many other messes, that show this.


4. What does all of this mean about the present? We really can't be sure.

Spy agencies NEED to have a great deal of autonomy and secrecy (in order to carry out covert affairs while allowing political figures to maintain distance and plausible deniability), and yet when they are given autonomy and secrecy, any powerful group of people will tend toward corruption.

So, we can be certain agencies like this will tend toward corruption, to some degree, at least occasionally, if not continually.

Is there any permanent solution to this?
Maybe, but I don't see it.

We have a built-in conflict of interest that probably can never be resolved.
We need spy agencies to have autonomy and secrecy while at the same time NOT having autonomy and secrecy.
I don't see any permanent solution.

Of course there's no way of knowing if this is true or not but I remember seeing an interview with a man who claimed to be a former CIA agent who admitted thard the CIA is responsible for most of the drug trafficking. It actually sounds plausible because the average American doesn't own any planes or boats