But, of course, Mr. Prince is an CIA asset, after all, they hired him/his company, to operate on their behalf, but, what was Mr. Prince himself up to? Mr. Prince is/was in the perfect position for a covert operator, in plain sight. But the question remains, what could Mr. Prince do for the CIA that the CIA could not do for itself?

The answer? Read the Vanity Fair article. After having done so, I think it answers most of my questions in a fair and balanced manner. (Ick! I DID NOT just say that!?)

Mr. Prince appears to be just another in a long line American uber-patriots, al-la Ollie North, who serve the ends of a right-wing, semi-Nazi Republican administration that believes that the end justifies the means. Which it does.

Oh, my God! What have I become????

Justice couldn't get to Pinochet fast enough before he croaked, but trends can change. Who knows? The people might just get all uppity enough to start holding the big boys accountable too — not just low-lying fruit like Graner or Lynndie England, who were “just following orders”.

This is also why the high mucky-mucks at Goldman Sachs are getting nervous. People don't seem to be buying their whole “we can tank the economy because Jesus embraces greed” line either.

Funny that.

Feh.

The reason why this is a significant story, is that those who work directly for the CIA aren't legally allowed to do half of what this little goober did. Moreover, those who work directly for the CIA are supposed to be subject to a little thing we taxpayers like to call “oversight”. The sort of thing that reigns people in so they don't go doing something stupid that embarrasses America later, like rendition or torture, or apparently in the case of this douche, outright murder.

See, some of us like to be ACCURATE about who precisely we're off killing, and if everything's done under the table, there are no guarantees of this. Most of the poor slobs they put in GITMO after all, were completely innocent, and some were kids as young as 15. This is what happens when you pay ransoms for impoverished people to turn in other impoverished people, and neglect to verify whether you've got the right dude, in a country like Afghanistan where many people share the same exact name. So you've got Hasan Muhammad, but do you have the right Hasan Muhammad? This is doubly dangerous in a country where old tribal rivalries mean you're more likely to have someone turn in his neighbor who allegedly stole his goat, or “violated his daughter” by looking at her ankle under her burkah, than you are an actual Al Qaeda terrorist.

And what makes this truly odious is that if this nitwit is out killing people at random in our name, we then become accomplices to his crimes if we allow it to continue. And I for one, am not down with that.

What this also highlights is the problem of outsourcing intelligence activities. The black budget is rife with this crap. Rights-violating programs like Total Information Awareness (that upset the entire political spectrum from Bob Barr on the Rightwing to Dennis Kucinich on the Leftwing), are quite correctly stopped by Congress because they know that under the Constitution (there's that damn piece of paper again) the program was basically pissing on your 4th Amendment right to order a pizza, or talk to your girlfriend, or cry to your mommy, or talk to your banker, or your doctor, or your boss without having some suit in D.C. snooping on you like a bad character in the East German Stazi.

So rather than respecting the American people and the laws they are supposed to protect, these asshats instead cut the program into little bits, then farm it out to private companies like Poindexter's Bright Sky Inc., who don't have to report to Congress (ie. “We the People's” representatives). The combination of compartmentalization and privatization allows the war profiteers to violate American law at will. And that's not kosher. And it's no accident that the people who pulled this crap back in the 80's during Iran-Contra are back doing it again now. That's what happens when you don't hold criminals accountable. Recidivism.

THAT is why this is important.

THIS time people need to be held accountable, and not only never be able to work for, or with the United States government ever again, but they need to get a big cellmate named Bubba who thinks 'ole Eric has a pretty mouth.

Better yet, the cells next door should house Darth Cheney, Alberto “Torquemada” Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo, and President-Select Bush himself for coming up with these dippy ideas in the first place. And because we're more merciful than they are, Condi Rice can have her own space in the Women's Correctional Facility for Wayward Shoe-shoppers.