[pkmaine]

This was an amendment offered by Barney Frank in 1996 regarding funding of the CIA. I would really love it if fellow Freepers could help me stitch together a picture of the attitudes of many democrats towards the CIA.

Of course, it would be inappropriate to wave this stuff about right now. But perhaps, there is value in making this information available when things have cooled a bit. I would be grateful for any additional info on this subject

[cksharks]

Why would it be inappropriate? Check out the two Mass dems his morning. They just called Bush and Ashcroft a lier!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[denydenydeny]

I think the CIA has many class A people. I think we need some intelligence, of course. I think the spy satellites in the sky are very important, yes. But I do not think things are so unstable that we need to increase this budget this year when we have got so many other demands. Let me tell you about my city of Denver. Last week we had to shut down Head Start. We had to shut down Head Start and send every little kid home in the first week in May because they ran out of money.

Unbelievable.

How many children were incinerated on those aircraft Tuesday?

[Mean Daddy]

It's amazing that you were able to locate this.

The American people need to know who it was (whether Democrat or Republican) that put us in the position that we are today.

[VoodooEconomist]

Now is not the time. But, there will be a time to bring all this out, and the Pubbies damn well better bring it out. I hope all the conservative think tanks are organizing and cataloging this kind of material. America needs to know that liberalism is chiefly to blame for the mess were in - not only in terms of vulnerability - but in terms of economics - and in terms of culture.

We read recently of the difficulty of the Committee on Appropriations in the allocations. They wanted to give more for the veterans and more for health care and more for job training and education. They had to do that at the expense of infrastructure and environmental cleanup and energy and water. This is the reason we face such terrible choices. As you increase the national security budget, you inevitably require greater decreases everywhere else.

It's not a difficult choice at all, if one were following the constitution. Those other things that Bawney Fwank mention are unconstitutional and shouldn't even be competing with funds for national security and national defense, which is the #1 function of the national government.

[denydenydeny]

From John Prados, "No Reform Here," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 1996:

"Intelligence mavens can no longer point to the Soviet Union as justification for all they want to do. The argument now being mouthed is that the CIA was not created to fight the Soviet Union, but to prevent another Pearl Harbor. It is true that legislators who drafted the National Security Act of 1947, the law that established the CIA, referred to Pearl Harbor, but they did so in the context of an already-intense Cold War with the Soviet Union, which they feared capable of inflicting a Pearl Harbor many times over. That is not the case today."

[spiker]

Barney Frank shows that he knows how to take advantage of his Congressional franking privileges.

Barney Franked

[Cicero]

I'm not about to stand up for Barney Frank, but the problem isn't cuts in funding to the CIA. Frankly, the CIA is getting more than enough funding already, and has made untold mischief over the years, especially under the clinton administration. No, the problem is to redirect our intelligence assets and focus them on the most dangerous threats to American security: China, Russia (not the danger it was, but still needing to be closely watched), and Islamic fundamentalist countries and groups. As I have said many times here over the past couple of years, the two gravest potential threats to our security in the coming century are China and Islam. They are both rising threats that need to be carefully monitored and redirected, in hopes of avoiding a full-scale direct confrontation.

Clinton, as most of us know, allied himself with both these groups. He took money from China and betrayed our secrets, and he helped arm and bring Islamic fundamentalists into the underbelly of Europe, in Bosnia and Kosovo. Our security agencies were directed elsewhere. That must now change.

[Gumlegs]

This is quite possibly one of the most important posts I have ever seen. We don't need to wear red, white, and blue. We don't need to light candles. Our enemies don't care. If we really want to make a difference we need to expose and defeat those elements in Congress who have eviscerated our intelligence and military communities for the last ten years.

Keep it up! Keep posting the names of those who have cut our intelligence and military budgets. And keep pounding on it come election time.

[SFmom]

This is an excellent idea! A great Freeper project! Are there any Freepers who have access to NEXUS searches?

[blam]

This is the guy that did the most to destroy the CIA, Democrat Frank Church.

[Free Vulcan]

bttt