Black Ops Rising

Max Boot (mental image of a hip boot) writes for RealClearWorld that covert action is once again on the rise. He provides a mostly reasonable one-page history of the ups and downs of the last half-century's black operations.

Recently, he alleges, our covert operators have had a quiet hand in several governmental overthrows, the Stuxnet corruption of the Iranian nuclear program's computers, and the bombings of Iranian nuclear scientists.

In his black ops history, Boot somehow completely leaves out the role of covert warfare in Southeast Asia. Covert action was the basis for the film Apocalypse Now and the reason we have Hmong immigrants in the U.S.