CIA Blogger Fired for Criticizing Torture Policy

PetManimal writes "A contract software developer for the CIA who had a blog on the CIA intranet was fired after criticizing torture in an entry. The title of the post: something along the lines of 'Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.' The Washington Post reports Christine Axsmith is not the only CIA blogger -- the spy agency uses blogs to let agents and other workers share information and ideas." From the article: "Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment on Axsmith's case but said the policy on blogs is that 'postings should relate directly to the official business of the author and readers of the site, and that managers should be informed of online projects that use government resources. CIA expects contractors to do the work they are paid to do.'"

Comments

Important change in phrase

[PHAEDRU5]

Fired "for" versus fired "after". There is a difference.

Of course, one doesn't expect the moonbat anti-ChimpyBusHitlerMcHalliburton crowd to catch this.

Re:Important change in phrase

[PHAEDRU5]

And it's even worse. The person in question was a contractor, not an employee.

What if the headline had been "Time-wasting Contractor Finally Exhausts Management Patience: Contractor preferred blogging to writing software."

I refer you to my anti-Chimpy..., etc commen of some moments ago.

Re:The US is absolutely civilized.

[Professor_UNIX]

The current administration has asserted that even US citizens apprehended on US soil can be classified as enemy combatants and held outside of the usual (criminal, military) prison systems.

Can you provide a single example of an American citizen being dragged from US soil to be held as an enemy combatant without due process? A link to a reputable news source would be sufficient.

Re:Two things:

[maxpublic]

The perception from outside the wall is that the USA is barbaric.

As someone who's actually traveled outside the country (and is in Korea as I post this), I call bullshit. Views of the U.S. vary from place to place, just as the views on anything else do. And no country is in any way united behind any one extremist position (e.g., "the U.S. is barbaric").

The slow decline of the US has been going on since the 50s.

The slow decline in what? Whether or not a bunch of has-been European powers approve of how we do things? Cry me a fucking river. I'm far more interested in what up-and-coming powers think of us - y'know, the people who'll actually matter during the 21st century. Like Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, etc. About the only European nation worth listening to these days is Germany.

Ironic, in an Alanis Morrisette sort of way.

Since then you've done everything possible to make the rest of the world hate you

If by "rest of the world" you mean "Europeans pining after their former place in the sun", perhaps you're right. If you mean certain Islamic countries in the Middle East, I can't really get worked up about that, either. But neither of these regions are remotely close to comprising "the rest of the world".

ignoring the United Nations

I fail to see how this is a bad thing. I'm not interested in anything remotely close to a one-world government, nor in having foreign nations dictate the affairs of my country. I'm quite fortunate to live in a country that can say "fuck you" to the UN and make it stick.

you're honestly looking not much better than one of those tinpot dictatorships in South Africa.

What an ignoramus. Why don't you haul your pasty, fat ass off to one of those "tinpot dictatorships", live a few months there, and then get back to us how how closely the U.S. compares to it. Assuming you get back alive at all, of course.

The only thing this statement tells us is just how bloody ignorant you are when it comes to the rest of the world.

But don't you dare get all holier than thou while allowing the current administration to get away (literally) with murder.

We'll dare anything we like, thanks. Not much you can do about it other than whine here on Slashdot. If you're expecting some outpouring of "American Guilt" you can forget it - most of us have had enough of that, and we're done now.

Max