Do they mean to tell us that men use prostitutes? When they are away on business? Who would have thought?

Should not use prostitutes.

and ideally no man should use prostitutes.

Well, good luck fighting that battle.

of throwing up your hands?

Ideally no man should use a prostitute. Women are NOT a commodity. And wives don't want diseases or cheating spouses.

Many men, believe it or not, do not have or want a wife. But they do want sex. Some men might not be appealing to women. Because of looks or personality. But they still want sex.

I do not see how a random hookup from a bar with some girl who you might make feel like shit when you never call them is any worse.

There is a reason they call it the world oldest profession.

who are too unappealing to attract a woman, either emotionally, physically, mentally or otherwise - assume they deserve sex?

Wouldn't you be better off making yourself more appealing? Just asking.

This was an egregious breech of security in a country that has had problems with our policies.

BUT ALL YOU CAN THINK OF IS YOUR DICK?

hard luck is wrong.

Your way of reducing every sex worker into a helpless, powerless victim who can't decide for herself is not only belitteling and condescending, it's also not true.

But I doubt all 11 were single - by odds.

The idea that all men don't see prostitutes as women anymore, but only as objects is, I think, more a distorted assumption of women who are against prostitution than it's actual (all) men's view. A woman who has sex with a man in exchange for money does not stop being a woman. She just delivers a service that you have to pay for.

the body, as if the body belonged to someone else, or were not part of the self. Dissociation is necessary for a prostitute to allow her body to be accessed and used by endless individuals. Over the long term, the trauma of dissociation creates serious mental problems.

Or are they, as I assume, mere assertions you made up by yourself, stemming only from a moral objection against prostitution?

the abusers.

To call it 'abuse' is ludicrous and radical. It has nothing to do with facts, but only with moral outrage. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, you may not condone it; that's all fine and fair. But to say that "anyone who uses prostitutes is aiding and abetting the abusers" is simply not a factual statement.

They are entrusted with a very important job.

It's a simple arrangement in that kind of situation: you get something you want, you pay for it. If you don't want to pay, don't play.

And I'm sure the amount of money involved is fairly small and not worth the hassle that's resulted.

are held to such standards.

Firstly those women are doing a job, just trying to make a living. If you use their services then you should pay for them, that's only fair.

But obviously if you're in a high security field then you shouldn't use those services in the first place.

On your own vacation, not when you are on a trip being paid for by your job for the US government.

security clearance NEVER goes on vacation...even when you do.

sP

into their rooms at the same hotel where they were going to be protecting the President of the United States of America. They should lose their jobs for such terrible judgment.

Do you remember McCrystal and those stories about JSOC and wild parties? Obama has been in love with JSOC since he took office.

This is so dangerous. Who cares about embarrassment, this is the president's safety for pete's sake.

in Dallas, partying until the sun came up on Nov. 22. Throw members of the U.S. military in the mix, and it is truly frightening.

says the story.

Don't make excuses for them.

This is not a job you take seriously sometimes.

The political embarrassment would be enough to get these guys side-lined.

But, worse than that, this advance security team has shown the world they are accessible via sex.

That sort of vulnerability is not tolerable when the lives of our president and the lives of other heads of state are on the line.

100% correct

PB

These guys are toast, somebody is in twubble! They got to weed out the weak thinkers here.

since prostitution is legal in Colombia.

I wonder if they smashed the whole place up, refused to pay the ladies, and were typical over entitled Yanquis, in which case the hookers are only incidental to the story.

If they acted like a bunch of drunken punks, which I strongly suspect, then they deserve this treatment.

It is highly unusual for the activities of the Secret Service to get into mainstream media at all. It does happen from time to time, but I am always suspicious when it does. Makes me wonder whose agenda is being served. In whose best interest is it to expose the SS as a bunch of incompetent, prostitute-buying lollygags?

It might be a very good thing. Only things like these get people back on track. The SS will be more professional from now on - at least until they get comfortable again, and decide to break laws and think they can get away with it.

Acting like punks is their culture; the president's security detail, not so much.

in a few "tolerance zones".

maybe the prostitutes found out who they were and thought they could wring more out of them with some blackmail. There's just as much evidence.

and a few military types is astronomical when they get involved in stuff like this. That was likely why they were terminated.

However, I still think they likely did damage, which is why it caught their superiors' attention.

I am frankly alarmed that 17 SS agents would think this was OK, paticularly where some of them are married. All someone would have to do is use photos of their actions to blackmail the agents. "Overlook that suspicious fellow with the gun over there or we will show you wife/employer this nasty photo of you." I would think this kind of situation would have been hammered into their heads from day one of their indoctrination. Wow, just wow.

Alcohol disengages your frontal lobes.

It's strictly the problem of this group of people. Drinking parties with prostitutes is a very, very bad idea for people whose job it is to check security for an upcoming Presidential visit, especially in a dangerous country like Columbia. These SS agents put themselves at risk for blackmail and worse by engaging in these activities. The President didn't have anything to do with it.

It is an embarrassment, and a security risk for the Secret Service, and heads are going to roll over this. And they should roll, and not just for the agents involved. There is a failure of training and supervision also that needs to be addressed.

Bad form all around, including the exploitation of the women involved, although the security risks are far more important. How well do a bunch of hungover Secret Service agents do their job, I wonder?

I have always looked at the Secret Service as some of the most moral and professional elites serving the United States. I am still puzzled by all this. I still generally believe the stereotype that the Secret Service are the best of the best. Handpicked, superlative examples of the Executive Branch.

This sort of debauchery is patently mindless given their important role. I just don't get it.

I'm still deeply puzzled about all this.

I guess there's also the potential subtext that not all of these prostitutes may have been 18. If that shoe drops, it's going to be even worse.

Talk about "protecting the president". What a joke. These guys should never work SS again. They should never work Treasury again. Fuck, I expect more from beat cops- really.

PB

Actually, I seem to recall hearing that during the time when the SS was rather gay in its makeup that it also partied quite hearty.

This may be a long-standing tradition exposed by a churlish customer.

It's quite atrocious how the media have largely neglected to cover the drug legalization controversy or the brouhaha over Cuba in favor of bright, shiny scandals du jour. But I see that reflected here as well.

Both from major media sources.

involving America's most elite security guards may have a lesson for the rest of us about the state of our government.

to be in the majority. I witnessed it all the time in my travels because we always seemed to get thrown in with those groups of people. These are foreigners, who feel that they don't have to respect the laws, rules and customs of a host country they are visiting, because they feel they don't apply to them and if they get into trouble their government agents will get them out of it. The cheap asshole who wouldn't pay for services was probably a racist, sexist Republican, who snorts down his nose on everyone except his own peer group.

If for no other reason than to keep an eye on the guys.

And irresistible as the female ones.

Colombia has been prepped for corporate rape with $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid, which has been used to slaughter thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists and other advocates of the poor and to brutally displace FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth.

This horrible prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich" was mostly accomplished by the Bush Junta (very likely along with U.S. war crimes in Colombia and consolidation of the trillion-plus dollar cocaine trade into fewer hands), but--as U.S. politics goes--Obama is thus poised to dole out the "benefits" to Monsanto, Chiquita, Exxon Mobil and other transglobal "players" while Colombia's own rich, fascist elite cleans up as well. The "benefits" include a huge slave labor pool (5 MILLION peasant farmers now living in city slums, can't feed their families any more, etc.) and huge tracts of fertile, resource-rich land "opened for business."

These Secret Service agents and Special Forces who hired prostitutes and party-ed in Cartegena were likely attuned to the general drift of U.S. policy (no matter who's in charge, Democrats or Republicans), that Colombia is a U.S. colony. Colonizing troops understand what that means. And it's quite interesting that the entire scandal was reportedly triggered by a Secret Service agent who wouldn't pay one of the prostitutes (or wouldn't pay her as agreed). This resulted in a loud dispute (following loud partying). Under Colombia's peculiar laws, "guests" have to be out of the hotel by 7:00 a.m. She wasn't. So the police were called in. How contemptuous and disrespectful can you be, to act as if local "services" should be free or low cost?

We should not immediately dismiss the notion that this was a set-up. Colombia is a snakepit of fascist plotting and fascist secrets on numerous fronts. For instance, the current president of Colombia, Manuel Santos, is in a deadly political battle with the former president, Bush Jr. pal, Alvaro Uribe, who is also "mafia boss" of Colombia (and ran Colombia like a criminal organization, with the blessing of the Bush Junta). Uribe is financed by drugs cartels (and very dirty on rightwing death squads, among other things). Santos, in calling for drug legalization, may be trying to undercut Uribe's power base. (He may also be fronting for Big Pharma which may be ready to enter the market for herbal, recreational and addictive drugs, via legalization.) The U.S. played a very dirty game in Colombia under the Bush Junta. The fascist plotting and fascist secrets involve virtually every agency of the U.S. government: the State Dept. and its diplomats, the Pentagon, U.S. military 'contractors,' the DEA, the FBI, the NSA, the USAID and more.

So, among these interests, who would want to embarrass Obama (just for starters) by a high profile scandal? Uribe springs to mind. Obama, via Bush Sr crony, Leon Panetta, replaced Uribe with Santos, likely because Uribe is so dirty. But they have taken actions to protect Uribe from Colombian prosecutors and other legal proceedings, and they landed Uribe on a silk cushion (among other things, cushy academic sinecures at Harvard and Georgetown) and are clearly afraid of him likely because of what he knows about U.S./Bush Junta crimes in Colombia. Uribe may have been "thanking" them (i.e., warning them) by planting a trouble-making prostitute in the Secret Service contingent. This is just a wild guess, as to a "set up" of the Secret Service agents. There are many possibilities.

But if it WASN'T a set-up, then the other possibility as to how these Agents could be so indiscrete, foolish and suicidal is that they felt that they were in a U.S. COLONY where such behavior by colonizing troops is expected and is covered up by local authorities in deference to the COLONIZER. This kind of attitude is probably not a fully conscious attitude. It's something "in the air" that soldiers pick up on. They thought they were immune.

And it's quite interesting that Bush/Uribe tried to make them immune to all Colombian laws. When Bush's operative in Colombia (U.S. ambassador William Brownfield) secretly negotiated and secretly signed a U.S./Colombia military agreement, with Uribe, circa 2009-2010, that agreement included "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. military personnel (and all U.S. military 'contractors') in Colombia. This secret agreement was later declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court, but still, it indicates Bush Junta intent in Colombia. Lawlessness. (That it occurred in 2009-2010 probably indicates additional intent to use the immunity provision retroactively, to cover up U.S. crimes. When Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold) used the rightwing coup in Honduras to blackmail Obama on his LatAm appointments, one of DeMint's goals was very likely to keep Brownfield in place, in Colombia, to get this deal done--a Colombian presidential signature on total immunity for all U.S. operatives--and that would include Brownfield himself. There is evidence that Brownfield, during the Bush Junta, was aiding Uribe in his illegal domestic spying program.)

Soldiers, Secret Service agents, Special Forces, et al, understand this kind of signal and other signals in the dominance game that is colonization. Colombia is less of a country than the U.S. and Colombians are lesser beings than U.S. agents. Thus, frolicking with Colombian prostitutes (and not paying them as per agreement) and causing a fray with loud partying, to them, was not unseemly; it was appropriate to the place (the colony). (And obviously they didn't think this through very well--it was likely subliminal.)

Of course, both things could be true--the Secret Service agents and Special Forces picked up on the colonization vibes AND they were set up.

It's impossible to know, as this point--and we really can't trust any account from corpo-fascist 'news' sources (all of the so-called "mainstream" media, which actually represent "the 1%" and are anything but "mainstream&quot . Sometimes the truth leaks through the corporate B.S. because there are contending corporate forces--for instance, Big Pharma vs War Profiteers, as to legalization. That could be in play--if my Big Pharma theory about these rightwing LatAm presidents pushing legalization is true, and if the Agents were set up. (War Profiteers trying to pressure Obama against legalization--showing him the kinds of ops they can pull off if he doesn't do their bidding?) (Just a guess.)

That is another thing that the agents and soldiers could have picked up on--that the U.S. "war on drugs" is a game. It is a war profiteers game; under the Bush Junta it was a big drug lords game; and now it is very possibly a game between Big Pharma and the war profiteers. What it is NOT is a sincere effort to address the drug problem. And if the "war on drugs" (no matter who is in charge) is just another transglobal corporate game, you better believe that soldiers "get" this and can conclude that they are entitled to their own games--however minor and relatively "innocent" they may be. (I mean, compare partying with prostitutes to the slaughter of thousands of advocates of the poor and the brutal displacement of 5 million peasant farmers. Their behavior--if true--was insignificant compared to the crimes of the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex.)

Mainly, I would caution against believing corporate 'news' stories (about this or anything else to do with LatAm). Something no doubt happened, because the agents and soldiers were reportedly recalled. But deeper issues such as lesser functionaries (the agents and soldiers) picking up on "colonial" policy vibes will never be addressed in the corporate media (because corporations are the beneficiaries of U.S. policy) and the fascist plots and secrets, of course, are systematically suppressed. (Ask yourself: Did you ever hear about the U.S./Colombia military agreement and its immunity provisions, its secrecy and its unconstitutionality before this? So many things are suppressed, "black-holed," distorted or given entirely inadequate attention--mere blips in the 'news' that quickly slip into the Great Corporate River of Forgetfulness.)

Hopefully it's colombian.

(not all, but the many that do) just don't seem to get it that they will get caught, and shit will ensue.

What I don't get is why they don't get it.

It really does make you nuts. I have to say that women too do crazy things, but they seem generally more in touch with sexual reality than men, perhaps because they cannot afford to be too delusional. I imagine pregnancy tends to focus your mind something wonderful.

But I consider that people are crazy to start with, sex just amps it up, like anythng that hooks into those primal drives we have.

prostitution to the mix!

Either these are not the people they are reported to be or they are both out-of-line and out-of-character. They just threw their jobs in the crapper for a bit or partying. So I'm willing to consider that this is not just stupidity. It is an election year, and funny things happen in election years.

Must be nice to be allowed to call the police when there's trouble without being arrested yourself.

Good job!