CIA Operations - Essay Example

The politicians in Washington are rightly concerned with the ease with which the CIA is killing off opponents of America, in particular the terrorists who have sought sanctuary in other countries. Those who criticize the Central Intelligence Agency want more transparency in CIA operations but the very nature of its operations requires utmost secrecy, so the politicians in Washington can be reminded that the CIA is already under the oversight of the president. In fact, it is President Obama who personally approves its ultra-secret list of targets for drone attacks.  Politicians are rightly worried about possible human rights violations, as the CIA is operating in complete impunity, answerable to nobody except the president himself. Congress now wants to see the memorandum which allegedly justified the killing by drone strikes, even including those American citizens who are considered terrorists and living abroad (Shear & Shane, 2013, p. 1). It also coincided with the confirmation hearings for the new nominee for the CIA top post, John O. Brenna, who is considered the chief architect of targeted killing using pilotless drones. Obama is accused of hypocrisy, they said enhanced interrogation techniques were now stopped, but he is using other means which are equally doubtful, in the legal sense. The said memorandum is really a classified document but Congress wants to see a copy of it, which detailed the justifications for killing an American citizen by his own government; the two reasons are if the target is a senior operative of Al-Qaeda and the capture is not possible without endangering American soldiers.

Yom Kippur War (October 6-25, 1973)

Israel was caught unprepared during this engagement because it generally cannot agree on a unified strategy if war ever comes. Moreover, the attack occurred during the holiest day of Israeli religious festivities, which in that year, also coincided with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The Israelis never thought the Arabs would launch an attack during their own holiest religious day. However, there are several reasons advanced why Israel was caught napping. This includes wrong assumptions made by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) military intelligence about Egypt's strategic plans and real intentions, and so concluded that war is not imminent due to these erroneous assumptions. Overall, the Israelis did not think the Arabs were serious about going to war and thereby ignored all warnings, compounded by the squabble among its generals.

The human body is a very complex system that is highly evolved over the years. It has a lot of body systems but one of the most sensitive, complex, and hard to study is the human brain. However, medical researchers and biological scientists have achieved a lot in terms of getting to know some of these complexities that somehow govern human behaviors. One of the important issues today is addiction, or more specifically, nicotine addiction associated with smoking, and finding ways how to promote cessation and avoid a relapse when nicotine is available. This issue is highly related to the cranial nerves of humans, which consist of twelve pairs in which two pairs of nerves emerge directly from the cerebrum while the ten pairs go out from the brain stem. The cranial nerves form part of the central nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal column.

In this connection, an interesting and pioneering study showed that fibrate medications intended to lower lipid levels have an unusual but beneficial effect on nicotine addiction. It is considered a happy discovery, similar to the discovery of Viagra which was initially intended to cure some heart ailments but found to be effective in the treatment of erectile dysfunction. The study mentioned above pertains to clofibrate (a representative of the fibrate class) which is widely prescribed to improve lipid profiles and help prevent some cardiovascular diseases. However, the study authors found out these experimental drugs can reduce the rewarding effects of nicotine on animals by preventing the acquisition of nicotine-taking behavior from naïve laboratory animals (rats and squirrel monkeys), substantially decreasing nicotine-taking in experienced animals, and counteracting the relapse-inducing effects of re-exposure to nicotine (Panlilio et al., 2012, p. 1). In other words, clofibrate blocked the effects of nicotine on the central nervous system, but more specifically on the ventral tegmental area and in the release of dopamine (ibid.).