One I ran into one conspiracy nut recently who stated flatly that the CIA was the most incompetent organization ever created. I replied, "Well, since it's an organization devoted to conducting classified operations, it's been around for some sixty years and the public has only ever heard about a handful of it's failures, then I would say that it's *very* competent at one of two things: either *actually* performing it's mission or else covering up that it *isn't* performing it's mission."

[NOTE: I considered bringing up Charlie Wilson's War as an example of a spectacularly successful covert CIA operation, but then I decided that since Wilson had to almost bodily drag the agency into that effort and further that the U.S. government subsequently and equally spectacularly failed to win the peace would have rather undermined my point.]