Mind the Gap - EU vs. US

I don't know what's supposed to pass for "allied relations" these days, but the current behavior of the EU bureaucracy certainly doesn't seem to relate. With friends like these, who needs Al Jazeera and Pravda? The EU is all up in arms about the fact that the CIA might actually be operating clandestinely. Well, what else is new? What do they expect? And, why are they doing this and doing it so publicly in the middle of a war?

Just read the stories about the reported CIA prisons in Europe. They're all just horrified that the CIA would be holding terrorists in secret. And the US is now having to "clarify" the situation.

It is, I guess, conceivable that there are those within the CIA that are so opposed to what we're doing that they would leak something like this, but I hope that is not the case. Granted, the CIA has had its failures and its agendas, but isn't the CIA supposed to capture and interrogate terrorists? Or wait, is that strictly the jurisdiction of legal professionals and local law enforcement? They can't reveal everything they do publicly. It's called "sources and methods". They have to protect them. Just as our self-absorbed European friends don't tell us everything they do either.

Going public with something like this (and other stories like the one about the CIA's air operations that ran in the NYT) is just irresponsible. It endangers the lives of many people, on our side, and it endangers our allies. It also endangers our ability to cooperate with one another because it destroys trust. As an organization, the EU is a joke. Of course, the EU bureaucrats have had a certain animosity toward our East European friends from the get-go, but that should not find its way into our military and intelligence relationships. It amounts to serious doublespeak on the part of the Continent. After all, these same countries that are our partners in NATO. Whose purpose does it serve to be so publicly obstructionist and antagonistic? The terrorists certainly want to fracture Western alliances and appeasement will only encourage them to continue. A united front is the only way to win.