Church committee

For those of you not old enough to remember the Church Committee investigations of the CIA in 1970 I offer this review. It was deemed by our government that the CIA with its covert activities had strayed too far and needed to be reined in. They were instructed among other things not to use unsavory characters to gather information. This pretty much destroyed their ability to gather information and left the country vulnerable. When 9-11 hit us many asked how this could happen without any warning and the answer was the Church commission. For the past ten years we have reintroduced the idea of working with undesirables and the result is that we are now dealing with informants who are providing us with targets. The drones that we have used so effectively to kill terrorist only work when we have CIA operatives working on the ground. We have now come full circle and are able to better protect ourselves by working closely with the types of people that are called euphemistically the bad guys. While information is always valuable during war time it is imperative in wars against terrorist. We are transitioning from wars of heavy equipment and air power to wars of information gathering. The military of the future will be hi tech and quick to respond and this will save lives and money. Too bad we had to learn this lesson the hard way. I wonder what all of those who cut the wings from the CIA are thinking.