Does the CIA Have Any Idea What's Going On?

There’s a whole story that we’re waiting to hear, and it may take a few decades (centuries?) to get in full. With the murky news that the CIA was bilked out of $20 million for hoax “terrorist-detecting software, software that the CIA suspected was fake for years before anything was done about it, it has to be asked: is the CIA actually not an immense, successful octopus diligently working to rearrange the order of the globe? Are they in fact just a bunch of ineffectual overpaid chumps, who were taken entirely by surprise by Tunisia, Egypt and Libya? Who are too busy using drones to shoot random “militants” in Pakistan to achieve any major goals in the rest of the world? (All the while staffing embassies with “contractors” who poorly promote “instability” ?) Is it really possible that the post-Cold War apparatus, which still costs taxpayers billions of dollars, was diverted entirely to bin-Laden-related issues, with little or at least unknown success over the last decade, therefore deprioritizing all other agendas? When you look back at their documents from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, you see a well-informed and active global intelligence network in action. In 40 years, will they be releasing just a few muddled cables related to Libya and Yemen? Or have all of the events of the last month been their doing? (Related: Prime Minster David Cameron is going to apologize for his country’s paternalistic (at best!) role in propping up crappy regimes around the world.)