CIA, USAID and Media Manipulation

60 Minutes Interview with John Stockwell. Who is John Stockwell? (this is from Grok):

John R. Stockwell (born 1937) is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the agency for 13 years. He managed American involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during the CIA's 1975 covert operations. Born in Angleton, Texas, Stockwell spent part of his childhood in the Belgian Congo due to his father's engineering work. After studying at the University of Texas and serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he joined the CIA in 1964. His career included roles in three major conflicts: the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Angolan War of Independence.

Stockwell resigned from the CIA in 1976, citing concerns over the agency's methods and the impact of its operations in Third World countries. He wrote "In Search of Enemies," detailing his experiences and criticisms of CIA activities, which became a bestseller. His other notable works include "The Praetorian Guard" (1991) and "Red Sunset" (1982). He has also been a frequent public speaker on issues related to CIA operations.

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The U.S. Role on Producing Heroin in Afghanistan

Why was USAID funding the production of heroin in Afghanistan?

John Kiriakou, who exposed the CIA and went to prison for it: "I went to Afghanistan to do a study on on the heroin Poppy crop. And I'll tell you, nobody liked it. Afghanistan used to be a net food exporter, and as soon as the US takes over, they're producing 93% of the world's heroin. That's right. I'd like to know how the fuck that happened. I get to Bagram Air Base and I said, I'm gonna need a helicopter to Lashkar. We get down there, and it's a god-awful place, but man, I'm telling you, as far as your eye can see, all there is, is Poppy. So I make an appointment to go to this DEA secret site, and they were like, you're in over your head. "There are very powerful forces that want that Poppy to be cultivated." And I said, "Why? It's 93% of the world's heroin." And they said, "Because almost all of that heroin goes to Iran and to Russia, and we want them to be addicted to heroin. It weakens their societies." I'm writing all this up. And [John] Kerry's like, "We're not we're not publishing that." And I was like, ah, they got to him too."

Mike Benz offers the details and they include connections with USAID:

And more details from Benz, including connections to the innocent-sounding "US Institute for Peace:

"And why is USAID’s network partner, the US Institute of Peace, lobbying the Taliban to keep 95% of the world’s heroin supply flowing while taking $56 million from US taxpayers each year?"

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Why Neocon Foreign Policy Fails Over and Over

This goes for the Neocons who taok over Republic foreign policy and also those how commandeered the cabinets of Democrats such as Obama and Biden. Mike Dimino, a former CIA analyst and a fellow at Defense Priorities. He has been involved in Mideast policy, particularly under the Trump administration, where he has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. He hammers it here:

We could talk about sort of the military analysis all day, and I think it's really important to do that. But the bigger point here has to be, you know, we have now seen 20 years worth of evidence in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, and Afghanistan that we cannot force liberal democracy at the end of a gun. Okay? Iran is a nation of 90 million people. Enough of the people in that country have to overcome what many sociologists and political scientists have called the collective action problem, right? The cost benefit analysis of organic political change, that calculation has to get to a point where change can happen. And that's how it has to work if it's going to last and if it's going to be meaningful. This idea that the United States should be using its military to go around the world and depose every single tin pot dictator that we find and bog ourselves down there to the tune of trillions of dollars to 1000s of American lives with no real goal or or purpose, where we are squandering our national resources in our bandwidth that need to be directed on far more pressing issues is just not really in America's interest. And that's, again, the biggest point that I would make here, is that, you know, this idea that you can, you know, send a couple of, you know, American stealth bombers, you know, over the border and kill all the ayatollahs and some kind of cinematic cutscene. And then, you know, some young woman stands up in a pantsuit and goes, you know, I'm ready to be the president of Iran now. I mean, life is not a Marvel movie and life is not, it's not Harry Potter. So as somebody that has spent a lot of time in the region and has worked on these issues as an intelligence officer, I could just tell you the idea that something like that is possible, I think, is what is in the heads of a lot of people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, and even a lot of the, you know, the Persian diaspora elsewhere, that is very against the regime. Again, I'm against the regime too, but it just doesn't work that way, where there's going to be some sort of perfect cutscene ending, and there's going to be, you know, overnight, some kind of new regime in Iran, we have learned that the world just doesn't work that way.

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