China killed or imprisoned 18-20 U.S. spies between 2010-2012, according to the New York Times.

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward…

Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.

Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

The loss of life is sad of course. Beyond that, this reminds me of the book Legacy of Ashes, in which Tim Weiner builds a convincing case that the CIA has never been any good at spying. This sort of thing happened all through the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War. The U.S. just never had much of an idea what its enemies were doing. Sometimes that actually worked to the enemy’s detriment when the U.S. assumed their capabilities and intentions were far worse than they actually were.

It also makes me think of the recent story about Trump giving away top secret information provided by Israeli spies, and possibly putting those spies’ lives at risk, although we will never know. If the U.S. isn’t any good at spying, all it can do is build relationships and make cash payments to countries that are. Israel may be one of our only reliable sources of intelligence in the Middle East, which sheds a little more light on why the U.S. values the relationship so highly.

How many troops does the U.S. have in Iraq? According to The Daily Beast:

Officially, there are now 3,650 U.S. troops in Iraq, there primarily to help train the Iraqi national army.

But in reality, there are already about 4,450 U.S. troops in Iraq, plus another nearly 7,000 contractors supporting the American government’s operations. That includes almost 1,100 U.S. citizens working as military contractors, according to the latest Defense Department statistics.

And I think we can expect the number to increase:

“We’re looking for opportunities to do more and there will be boots on the ground and I want to be clear about that,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told CNBC last month. “But it’s a strategic question whether you are enabling local forces to take and hold rather than trying to substitute for them. That is a strategic intention that we have.”

The next U.S. administration has publically committed to large defense spending increases. It has already lifted a long-standing rule intended to require a civilian to head the Department of Defense. A retired general has been put in charge in homeland security. An executive from the oil industry, which is just fine with taxpayer funded boots on the ground advancing its interests in the Middle East, is going to run the State Department.

We also have boots on the ground in Afghanistan, of course, plus Syria and Libya. Of course, we have advisors in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, and are participating with Saudi Arabia in a proxy war against Iran in Yemen. In 2012 Seymour Hersh told us that U.S. Special Forces are actively involved training proxy forces inside Iran itself, a claim which official and media U.S. sources quickly shot down. I have no evidence to the contrary, yet Seymour Hersh has some past experience telling truths that the government and media find inconvenient.

I’ve rambled a bit here. But my basic thesis is that we can expect the oil industry and the military-industrial complex to be running our country’s foreign policy for the foreseeable future. They seem increasingly to be drawing us into a proxy war with Iran and Russia on one side, and the Gulf Arab states on the other side. Maybe this is the way Cold War II will unfold. There is no sign of the checks and balances we all learned about in elementary school. The only checks that matter are the ones the public writes to the IRS, and the only balances that matter are the ballooning ones on our credit card statements. This won’t change until the public feels poor and realizes why they feel poor. Well, we do feel poor but we are buying into propaganda that it is mysterious foreign and internal enemies that are the problem, and not the worsening global economic and geopolitical climate our actions are continuing to destabilize. Not to mention the actual climate.

Ouch, doesn’t this seem just a bit harsh? Well, maybe for anyone who is not named Dick Cheney.

in retrospect it is hard to say that Cheney’s decisions were anything but deeply prescient, and one thing is certain: The invasion ended Islamic terrorism and did not create a civil war that ironically allowed al-Qaida to flourish in an area where it had no prior presence, ultimately begetting an even more dangerous and inhumane splinter group called ISIS that continues to threaten American lives to this day.

Many speakers at Thursday’s event commented on the unique courage demonstrated by Cheney’s willingness to commit thousands of young American soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines to death or permanent incapacitation abroad despite his admission that he intentionally avoided military service when he himself was a young man during a time of war.

Cheney was also praised for his ethical decision not to arrange for a company which had very recently paid him tens of millions of dollars and in which he had “a continuing financial interest” to become one of the largest beneficiaries of United States federal spending in Iraq. One can only imagine the repercussions if he had actually done something like that.

Here’s to Dick Cheney!