We all know that the CIA has some strange covert operations that in all probability the general public would not necessarily approve of, but did you know that the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group actually once seriously considered making a video asserting that Saddam Hussein was gay?

The CIA bounced around the idea of making a video depicting Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenaged boy with the intention of then distributing the video around Iraq so that he would lose face in the eyes of the Iraqis. This idea, obviously, did not make the cut, but another arm of the CIA (the vaguely-titled “Office of Technical Services”) actually did make a fake video of Saddam Hussein and his “cronies” drinking alcohol. According to the Washington Post, the CIA used some of their darker-skinned intelligence officers for the video.

Ideas like this make me question the use of the word “Intelligence” in the Central Intelligence Agency- it’s definitely an oxymoron. I have a tough time believing that the government actually paid for this kind of fruitless creative brain-storming session. Truthfully, I’m more than a little curious about what kind of weed the CIA agents were smoking when they came up with those crazy ideas and if the government paid for that, too.

Not surprisingly, the Saddam Hussein liquor video reportedly had little impact in Iraq (possibly because it was obvious to anyone watching it that the “actors in the video” were not actually Iraqi) and eventually the military stepped in to rescue the CIA from further embarrassing itself with its ridiculous campaigns. Although the campaigns were meant to be covert operations, they did come out eventually.

The US military seemed to have a better handle on the situation. One particular military intelligence operation was much more successful than the CIA’s lame attempts- the Pentagon once sent faxes and e-mails which asked Iraqi military leaders to “go home” because they had no chance of victory. Supposedly, many of the Iraqis actually believed the correspondence was legitimate and went home.

I am, however, not complimenting  the US military on their Interrogation tactics (including Waterboarding) which were both horrific and shocking to the entire world and particularly to those who suffered from them. We have no excuse for that kind of behavior.