They got a lot of breathless positive press for being a "institutional bullwork against trump" :(

I view the U.S. intelligence agencies as a necessary evil that should be made less evil over time. We have seen a lot of progress, in large part to whistleblowers like these, and the public reaction they've caused. The agencies are very aware of public perception and do a fairly good job of restraining themselves these days.

One big improvement would be to build up a much larger number of special forces troops to operate these kinds of targeted attacks. They would be much more precise than missile attacks, killing far fewer unarmed women and children (see: the Bin Laden raid).

The trade off is that we would lose a lot more soldiers, but that would be a worthy trade off. These troops could be made up entirely of volunteers. If we're not willing to risk our soldiers, we're probably not confident enough that the enemy is a target worth attacking.

The U.S. military never should have resorted to bombing unarmed women and children in WW2 and beyond. It's time to stop even targeted strikes where unarmed women and children will knowingly be killed.

There's nothing wrong with attacking people who declare themselves deadly enemies through words or actions. But let's have our soldiers go into combat against them head-to-head (with much better gear, of course) and fight it out like an honorable and brave people should.

Just go to r/politics, they loved intelligence agencies a lot for fighting against the so-called russian collusion.

"so-called"? you mean the one where there are multiple connections and convictions related to russians? that "so-called" collusion that was covered up?

Are you talking about Flynn? Imo, being apolitical, that looked like an inconsequential offense, and the FBI response to it looked like a dumb waste of time. And the longer they dragged it out, the dumber it looked.

lol, go to the DC area. they have lots of convoluted words to abstract the reality of the situation away to be comfortable with that career.

Yeah, some version of "pro-CIA progressive" is a common political identity in DC. It is very weird.

It's almost like when a parent is in denial about their spouse abusing others. They turn a blind eye to it.

Or it's more like the people in DC see the value that the IC brings to policy and war.

Right, like a parent sees the value of an extra income, and subconsciously recognizes the benefit to their sanity to not recognize that they live with an abuser, so they let things slide.

Yes stopping terror attacks and keeping the US policy circles informed about ongoing activities in other countries is the same as domestic abuse. Well put! /s

Agreed - any functioning modern government needs an effective IC, the replies to your comment are naive. People in DC are more likely to see the pragmatic reality as part of their work, rather than some HN commenter who works on ads at facebook.

Nah, they just want a job and like that their eligible degree and clean track record allows them a fast track in earnings, compared to other government employees and everyone else in the area.

They're just as disillusioned as any one else.

The only people that drink the coolaid are a subset of the high school dropouts in the military, who actually need the military as the opportunity, singular. That system - even dropping out of high school - is basically tailored for non objective thinkers searching for a missing support system.

As as Greek–American, I am somehow not sold on the "value" of the American IC's support for right-wing dictatorships.

Where are these right wing dictatorships you mention? If you are mad about the US supporting dictatorships just wait till you hear about USAID.

Or perhaps it is simpler: DC is overwhelmingly Democratic, Trump did not like the "deep state", so it must be embraced with enthusiasm, of course.

Polarized two-party politics makes some strange bedfellows.

rough take, DC is fed by workers from Maryland and Virginia, educated in their universities and pipelined into Defense and Defense contracting.

This has been the case for a long time and those surrounding states have large Republican portions especially where many of the Universities are located in the middle of nowhere. But higher education is heavily Democratic, and doubly so in that area.

But the 2010s don't have much to do with aspirations in the intelligence community, mostly undermining those aspirations with the whistleblowing.

So even a tongue in cheek response like that is still trying to make a relation thats tough to make.

Negatively compared to what specifically ?

Well, they literally sit in pundit chairs in major “progressive” media outlets nowadays, and they were absolutely celebrated by those same people for their work continually running ops on Trump. Basically the entire neoliberal/neoconservative class cannot get enough dark intel arts into everyone else’s life.