SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion
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worst possible ops team
date
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Waylon Flowers & Madam
Jethro Bodine
Tiny Tim
Rich Little
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Whit Bissell
Buddy Ebsen
Bob Newhart
Lola Falana
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Tommy Chong
Louis Prima
Ray Charles
Stevie Nicks
Jimmie Carter (The ex-President)
Jim Carrey
Larry
Curlie
Moe
Jim Carrey
Larry
Curlie
Moe
Mod
another selection:
Rip Taylor
Billy Carter (president's brother)
John Boy Walton
Joan Collins
Tony Randall
Spalding Gray
Bo BergdahlJessica Lynch
John Kerry
Nidal Malik Hasan
led by Denny Green
Mod
Mod
Someone in this group actually brought that one up, and had some good insights. It strikes me much as the Bay of Pigs, or the entire Vietnam deployment, in that the leadership at the top (CinC/Executive Branch) had a priority other than victory; and their meddling set up the men involved for failure.
George Galloway Ed Miliband
Marie Harf
Sarah Palin
OR
The FBI Task force from NBC's crime/conspiracy thriller drama "The Blacklist", a team which no sane person would desire a place on. They are incompetent to a nightmarish degree and only get by due to an independent contractor attached to them. Said independent contractor is a wealthy, charming, well dressed businessman. He's also a rogue officer from the office of naval intelligence, a professional criminal and one of the most accomplished silver tongued manipulators on network TV who has made it a hobby of his to "guide" his FBI playthings in the direction he wishes them to. Honestly, while CTU had more sleeper agents, they also had more competent operators on their staff than these fools combined.
Larry Moss Nina Myers
Grant Ward
Stephanie Meyer
El James
Two of these are not like the others....
Mod
..and when people say 'Homer Simpson' to me, my first thought is Nathaniel West and 'The Day of the Locust'
Samuel wrote: "Larry Moss Nina Myers
Grant Ward
Stephanie Meyer
El James
Two of these are not like the others...."
Two traitors who would backstab the others at the first opportunity a obstructive bureaucrat and a pair of hacks who have managed to leverage media attention into making oceans of money.
Although, honestly, they don't compare to the circus on the NBC crime/conspiracy drama "The Blacklist". The team no sane person would want to be on. The idiocy they do on an episode by episode basis would have gotten them all fired by the FBI in real life before they even solved their first case.
They only get by due to employing a well dressed, competent, charming scumbag who runs rings around them on a daily basis.
Mod
Question for this thread. Incompetents or traitors.
In a fictional team, which
would cause/normally causes more damage?
Incompetents are only effective if they're in upper management...and most fictional traitors aren't fast enough in killing off the threat to them.
Traitors could cause much more damage, simply by telling the enemy where to find you.
For fictional traitors on a team though, there's a balancing act. Once the casualties hit a certain number, the list of suspects get thinned out, and then the suspicions get spiked. So for them it's either to hope for a clean sweep or being able to toe the line after picking off people one by one and then finish off the rest before they can put two and two together. However, I agree that it's a different matter if said traitor is safely in the top brass, (think Philby and the work he did to annihilate the anti-communist Albanian partisan project the CIA and SIS ran in the 50's) More chances to buy time and muddy the waters as long as you don't disintegrate from any vices or breaches of tradecraft.
I suppose on a fictional team, as long as the incompetents aren't commanding and are subordinate, the potential damage is eliminated.
Unfortunately, it seems that in real life the incompetents are nearly always in the upper echelons, while the pros in the field have to compose with their idiotic orders and micro-management. Why so? Because, in my opinion, the higher you go in an intelligence organization, the more chance you will encounter political appointees parachuted in as a favor from some big wig (or even THE big cheese). Also, when in the upper echelons, it is a lot easier to put the blame on your subalterns if you do a screwup. Sorry if I sound cynical, but I am, to a point, when it concerns government business. One fine example of top echelon micro-management is during the Vietnam War, when Secretary of Defense MacNamara and his bunch of think-tank wiz kids reviewed daily air photos of the then besieged base of Khe San and telling the generals that they wanted more sandbags added on a particular section of the perimeter. With such political interference, no wonder the U.S. lost the war.
Father Mulcahey
Benson
Benson,mum
Susan Strasberg
etc?