Under the Hood of AT&T's Monitoring System

pkbarbiedoll writes "The recent discovery of AT&T's monitoring program has raised more than a few eyebrows. While the class action suit filed by EFF is pending (as well as a seperate suit filed against the NSA filed by the ACLU), interested parties are taking the time to learn more about the scope of this massive invasion of privacy. Bewert examines the Narus architecture used by AT&T in their previously shadowed (and ongoing) collaboration with the NSA."

Comments

NSA and AT&T

[pilsner.urquell]

Is anyone surprised?

Re:NSA and AT&T

[geekp0wer]

Ok, Your suspicions were correct. Now what are you going to do about it? Probably nothing. The fact that our goverment (which ever agency or sitting president) autorized it is a major problem. Letting it happen with out holding them accountable is the real tragedy.

Re:NSA and AT&T

[kimvette]

1. It's implied
2. The Constitution Itself states that our rights are not limited to what are expressly stated in the document

Today's government seems to have flipped the coin and reversed it despite the document's self-stated intent: officials seem to believe our only rights are the ones which are enumerated, and all other things are disallowed.

Worrisome

[Winlin]

And not just for those people who dislike the current administartion. As has been said before, even if you approve of Bush, how will you like President (Clinton, Kerry, Gore, etc) having this same technology at their disposal. It is dangerous for any government to be able to monitor its citizens this thoroughly, no matter what the original intent might be.

Re:Worrisome

[Nutria]

And not just for those people who dislike the current administartion. As has been said before, even if you approve of Bush, how will you like President (Clinton, Kerry, Gore, etc) having this same technology at their disposal.

I totally agree with your sentiment. But...

From TFA: this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000 .

W wasn't elected until November/December 2000.

IOW, Clinton did this, not Bush. Remember Carnivore?

Re:Worrisome

[einhverfr]

This is true. The AUMF argument is exrtraordinarily dangerous and would effectively turn our nation into a military dictatorship.

This being said, many of the most contraversial policies-- the criminalization of pure speech, the extraordinary rendition, and other serious erosions of human and civil rights actually began under Clinton. So unfortunately we cannot merely blame this on Bush as he is largely fulfilling Clinton's policies more than diverging from them.

Re:Worrisome

[legirons]

"IOW, Clinton did this, not Bush. Remember Carnivore?"

What makes you think it's the president's idea? Surely the NSA does what the NSA does, regardless of the person who's theoretically supposed to be telling them what to do.

People who've watched Yes Minister will know what I mean.

Or if you've been watching the UK Home Office do its "ID cards" thing regardless of which figurehead is nominally in charge of the department. People used to say that it's all David Blunkett's fault, until he left and his old department of civil servants carried on doing exactly the same thing with a new "leader".

People blame one president for what the FBI, NSA, DHS, etc. are up to, and when that president leaves, it all continues as if nothing had changed. Aren't government bureaucracies the same, the world over?

Re:Worrisome

[ScrewMaster]

And as for their inclination to make use of power....I'm cynical enough to think that if it's there, it will be used.

With or without their knowledge. Bush happens to be one of those presidents who is more openly scornful of legal restrictions upon his behavior. In reality, we're even more at risk from unelected officials that have even fewer scruples, who are more dangerous simply because they are so hard to remove.

Re:Worrisome

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I think he got that, but there are actually people who want Al Gore or Hillary Clinton to be President. I'd love if Al Gore became President, because I know he actually has some good ideas.

Consider part of the foreword from Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance:

"For those who want to attack my view, let me save you the trouble of reading the entire book. On pages 325 and 326, I wrote:'It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period.' It is possible; it needs to be done; it will create more jobs, not destroy jobs. I'm proud that I wrote those words in 1992, and I reaffirm them today."

On the other hand, who really voted for Kerry?

Re:Worrisome

[i kan reed]

in fact, forget whose fault it is anyways, just elect someone who will promise to stop it. As far as I know, there's no one like that up and running. We need someone.

Re:Worrisome

[einhverfr]

Well put.

Part of the problem though is that we are what we are now, and a true conservative would make slow and incrimental changes away from it rather than the radical departures that we see from the Bush Administration (at least in their justifications rather than their actions).

Finally I would suggest that the problem is not with the political parties as a whole but with the structure of our government. In particular, the role of the President is as non-conservative a role as you can find-- the President is a singular individual who usually wants to take less than eight years to leave his mark on history. This sort of unbridaled vision is at odds with any conservative methodology. Our "liberal" courts are actually far more conservative than our elected branches of governemnt. They respect precident, avoid sudden and large shifts in the law, and so forth.

It is time to get back to the basics. Promote stability of government and predictability of policy. Avoid electing those who seek to change course quickly or drastically. And then start to incrimentally fix the problems that we (the electorate) have created.

Re:Worrisome

[Paladin144]

i have to agree that america needs war, but look at how the economy changes for the better everytime there is a war. truly their is more then likly a better solution but at the same time look what war weeds out of the country. if there was a draft wouldnt the country be completly different, no more murders on the loose all of them weilding guns in a foreign country doning what they do best. not to mention that fact that this country was born out of war. so is it even a surpise, i for one believe that war for america is a good thing

You speak of the economy as if that was the only thing we need to consider. The equation is far more complex than you make it out to be. You say it's all about the economy. I say, what about morality? What about the basic human kindness of not rampantly killing each other? Besides, war is only fun if you're winning. But you always lose eventually.

Your fantasic delusions of a crime-free society in an endless series of wars reminds me greatly of 1984. Perhaps you should read that book.

Re:Worrisome

[killjoe]

You dilemma is kind of moot. Most people don't vote on those issues. In the next election the most important issues will be moral issues where a very hard line is drawn between republicans and democrats and the war with iran (yes I said iran).

By bombing Iran Bush and flagging the abortion and gay marriage issues the republicans will be assured of a win in the next election.

Nobody cares about the size of the govt. The republican party has a sure fire button to push with their electorate who are much more alarmed with homosexual "rights" then the size of the govt.

Re:Worrisome

[vought]

liberalization of handling of illegal aliens

Did you mean Get hispanics to Vote Republican?

Re:Worrisome

[Nikker]

Wow, just wow, buddy you need to get out.

Our defense contractors can stay fed by selling new shit to our military, while unloading old technology on other nations. There's plenty of wars out there to keep all of them rich; there's no requirememnt to start new ones.

You believe that eh? It's like saying WallMart doesn't need to make anymore money they have enough already. Microsoft doesn't need any more advertising their market is big enough. Pull your head out of your ass man, when you have this much money it's no longer about having enough money to afford an object of your chosing, do you think these guys are saving up for a bigger pool in their backyard? If they can make more they will do evreything they can to make that happen.

field-testing new soldiers" is rather pointless, as human nature rarely changes. Training is standardized and does not decrease in effectivness. Therefore the only thing to be gained by sending soldiers to war is the development of new tactics and doctrine. However, those things tend to change from conflict to conflict anyway, so starting wars just to develop new tactics is also rather pointless.

You really have your head up your ass on this one, but let me break it down for you anyway. A Pitbull is a type of dog, this dog is known to be agressive by nature and used in dog-fights around the world. Now you may think that these people just get a dog drop it in a ring with another and let em go? No. They beat it, make it angry, provoke it, even after all this it's still not ready you know what they do? They take a little fluffy puppy and make the pitbull rip it apart, now it has the taste of blood and the confidence to kill. Now it makes the first move, now it is battle-hardened, blood and killing no longer scares it or slows it down it just wants more. This is what is happening in Iraq a country with millions of active soilders being told how wars are fought, shooting rounds of ammo in preperation for the one that will kill the other guy. After a while no amount of screaming or preperation can improve their skills as killers they have to actually kill 'a fluffy little dog'. A war they cannot lose a foe that cannot bring the wind out of their sails. They have to see their friends die as well as their enemies and the innocent. Now they go back to the millions and become heros and bring the millions of unready up to a new level, get them frothing at the mouth just waiting for 'fluffy' to rear their head up again. Now have a real core to your army. If you think uncle Sam can pick your scrawny, pale ass give him a gun and your gonna let the frags go like Quake, you would likely shit yourself before you got your first shot off and possibly go into shock when you get real brains splattered all over you.

Now I guess you think you know something really well but look over what was just said....

Where the hell do you get these ideas from?

Re:Worrisome

[Planesdragon]

IMNSHO, a lot of W-haters are exersizing selective amnesia regarding this case.

Except that NO ONE has alleged that Clinton went around doing these things without regard to either the FISA court, or that he lied about how often he would be doing this sneaky thing.

And if you think it all started with Clinton, then I've got to tell you about this bridge near his office that he wants me to sell you. It's a historic, early 19th century suspension bridge, no less. ;)

Re:Worrisome

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

governments have been trying to pull this crap for years. it didnt start with bush, or clinton & its not just in the usa, its been going on a long time, across a lot of countries, this is just a gradual progression now that the technology allows it.

if they get their way, we'll be under 24/7 total surveilance & even our thoughts will be monitored & automatically scanned for possible 'terrorist' ideas.

theres nobody you can vote in that will stop it.

Re:Worrisome

[arminw]

.....I'm cynical enough to think that if it's there, it will be used.....

What does cynicism have to do with that? It's just human nature that guarantees that it will be used. it doesn't really matter who is in power. No government ever GIVES human rights, they only take them away, just like they do with your money.

All this monitoring of course would be a lot harder if every byte of data any computer ever sent out on the internet would automatically be encrypted. I understand that there are still some forms of encryption that are be resistant to even the kind of processing power mentioned in the article. There is some money to be made by the first person to come up with a simple, powerful, universal encryption program that works for all data and all computers or computer like devices.

Re:Worrisome

[fyngyrz]

Government should only build roads, protect borders, and keep order by punishing evildoers.

Suggestion for you. Modify to:

Government should only...

1. Improve, manage and maintain physical and educational infrastructure
   (FWIW, my take on physical infrastructure is communications, roads, airlanes, waterways, distribution mechanisms for heat and power.)
2. Protect the citizens, infrastructure and land from physical aggression, be it external or internal, large or small.
   (Note that I define theft as physical aggression.)

Anything else is government stepping out of bounds. When you call for the goverment to protect you from "evildoers", you create a class of government rulemakers that can define what YOU do as evil, regardless of the actual or relative nature of your actions.

You could be smoking pot to reduce your glaucoma, for instance, and end up in prison. You could build a home on some lovely location, and then the government could come along, decide your tax base isn't sufficient to their needs, and take your home and land. You could be attempting to purchase a drug such as alchohol on a Sunday and find yourself on the wrong end of someone's encysted religious agenda. You could be playing a Led Zeppelin song to a cabbie and find yourself the subject of a cavity search sans your preferred partner, lubricant, and molded accessories. You could be broadcasting your opinion to some subset of the masses and say something some moron somewhere decided was "evil", and find yourself a half a million dollars poorer.

You wouldn't want to live anywhere these kinds of thing could happen, would you?

Oh, wait.

What really bothers me

[Newer Guy]

What really bothers me about all this is the President's "F**k the laws, I have a job to do" attitude. How is this any different then the attitudes of the terrorists?

We've all heard the saying: "Two wrongs don't make a right". Hasn't the Bush adminstration?

The United States is a nation of LAWS...So many of you constantly remind us of that fact whenever p2p is mentioned here...yet many of these same people believe that our President has the right to IGNORE laws he doesn't want to follow.

Why

Learning to love big brother;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people so consistently surprised by this kind of news. I've come to simply expect that corporations are in full swing of subjugating the general public.

Re:Learning to love big brother;)

[mrchaotica]

I've come to simply expect that corporations are in full swing of subjugating the general public.

There's a word for that system of government: Fascism.

Re:Learning to love big brother;)

[Paladin144]

There's a word for that system of government: Fascism.

I'm surprised that you haven't been modded flamebait already by the (guess who!) fascists. I'm glad you weren't modded down, because you are 100% correct.

I understand those of you who are in denial, however. The idea that America is slowly going fascist is a big, painful pill to swallow. However, the fact remains that corporations have unprecedented control of our society, and our government. Corporations are the primary institution of our time, just as capitalism is primary ideology (not democracy, that's for sure. How often do you vote? How often do you shop? Compare.) of 21st century America. Add to this unfortunate mix the shadow government in the form of the Military-Industrial Complex, and you have a recipe for the hidden hand of fascism.

I leave you with a quote from Mussolini:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Re:Learning to love big brother;)

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Yep, the corporations are out to control the gov't and there's one lone Sladshdotter who knows their dirty secret. There's probably a black helicopter over your house right now in silent mode too.

Two words.

[KitesWorld]

'Absolute power'.

A democratic government is supposed to have limited power by design. However, as they grow, they tend to cut themselves free of the shackles that their founders placed on them.
If you're going to be suprised about anything, be suprised that it didn't happen sooner.

Re:Two words.

[MourningBlade]

Democracies fall because the public can be bribed.

Parliamentary governments fall because they either devolve into democracies, or they appoint a dictator because they can't get anything done.

Our constitutional republic is structured so that state governments have broader areas of control than the national government[1], but those walls have been broken down. Once it was discovered that, even though it's technically easier to influence state policy, pandering and political acts are more effective and visible at the national level the fight against constitutional restrictions began in true.

If we fall, it will be either because we have created a dictatorship or a democracy at the national level.

I believe the cure isn't better policies at the national level, it's the reaffirmation of the power of the states.

Unfortunately, a quick look at how many public-interest causes primarily lobby at the national level versus the state level is rather disenheartening.[2]

Though all may not be lost - as ideologues and ninnies have controlled the federal government, it has set up an antagonism with state and city governments. The recent movement (largely symbolic) by states and cities to forbid police cooperation with the USAPATRIOT act and - even more promising - with some aspects of the drug war[3], and issuing proclamations condemning national acts...well, it's heartening.

[1] - it's worth noting that corruption at the state and city level is many times worse than the wet dreams of the federal congress.

[2] - I don't have any direct numbers here - going off memory and a survey of some causes that I know. If anyone has better numbers....

[3] - Several states (California among them, I believe) have forbidden their officers from providing support to the DEA in drug raids. Some have done this for cannabis, as they have medical marijuana laws. Others have done it for financial reasons.

what about encryption and VPNs

[Anonymous Coward]

I would assume that any business would set up a encrypted VPN tunnel as soon as their network was to enter the telco. So assumming that this was the case, how would this device (sitting inside the telco cloud) Monitor any of this traffic. Furthermore, I dont see how the device would be able to construct "a total network view" from within the telco even without encryption. (The firewall would block ping sweeps or other reconnasance based attacks) Joe consumer on the other hand, would not have a encrypted connection, so I think its safe to say that the sole purpose of this technology is to spy on citizens. Tor routing would provide the citizen/terrorist with encryption that would circumvent the monitoring device. So in the end, it sounds like this device is a hugely expensive monitoring device that would only catch the dumbest of dumb.

Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar

[Guppy06]

"As surveillance expands, people become free from danger, free to walk alone at night, free to work in a safe place, and free to buy any legal product or service without the threat of fraud."

Note that "free to dissent" doesn't appear in that list.

Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar

[the_humeister]

Hey, that's dialogue from Deus Ex!

Now that this is out (and Tice's info).

[Anonymous Coward]

Look carefully at Carnivore and Calea. It was a ruse even back then. We have had the capability for quite some time to examine all the cell calls, telephone calls, and e-mails. In real-time. Undetected.

Now, think in terms of who this stuff was sold as being meant for: Al Qaeda. Do you honestly think that Al Qaeda does not have a clue about what capabilities we have? They have not trusted their regular comms for quite sometime. They go to great lengths to use either human carriers and some other very clever approachs to hiding their comms.

So then, who is this being used on? Read the so called USA PATRIOT act. It allows the passing of information from the NSA/CIA to the DOJ, that was obtained in the persuit of terrorist. That is, it allows ALL of comms that we have in country to go do the DOJ, if it was meant for find terrorists. So now, the NSA simply says that all of their information was obtianed in the persuit of terrorism, and it can be passed to the DOJ.

Great. We are busy catching bad guys. Of course, people like GWB and Karl Rove would never have access to the Democrats or Libertarians information since it is all encrypted on secure systems such as Windows. Right? We would neve expect that our current or future republicans to use it to illegally futher their own goals, right? APCA

Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar

[robogun]

We are close to achieving this goal. Some would say that human liberty has been compromised, but the reality is just the opposite. As surveillance expands, people become free from danger, free to walk alone at night, free to work in a safe place, and free to buy any legal product or service without the threat of fraud. One day every man and woman will quietly earn credits, purchase items for quiet homes on quiet streets, have cook-outs with neighbors and strangers alike, and sleep with doors and windows wide open. If that isn't the tranquil dream of every free civilization throughout history, what is?

The problem is, all that security has to be controlled from somewhere, and that means power in the hands of men -- fallible, selfish men -- and all thru the 20th century, it was proven repeatedly that time this kind of control over citizens is at hand, millions die.

Your idea is straight from Orwell, do you really think that is going to get past Slashdot readers?

Better Privacy Laws

[hindumagic]

More people are starting to use the internet for their personal correspondence and business.

There are strict laws governing snail mail to protect against this very abuse we're seeing, among others. Imagine if companies, and the government, were able to know every bit of content in your snail mail? Would you be comfortable with that? What if every bit of your communication is available to the highest bidder? (a possible outcome of all this if something isn't done now)

Change the laws! Why is this information not as important as the stuff that goes on paper? Apply the same mindset that we have with the mail system towards internet traffic. I'd be fine if they recorded traffic's origin and destination, but they shouldn't lawfully have access to the *content* of my correspondence.

Technology is only going to make this oversight easier and easier. We have to educate people and change attitudes starting now.

Forget AT&T. Look at who else uses Narus...

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.narus.com/customers/index.html:

AT&T, Brasil Telecom, KDDI, KT, KPN, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt, T-Mobile, US Cellular

I must say that the Saudis using narus stuff amuses me greatly, but the rest of the list scares me. I mean, they've even got parts of Japan (KDDI) and South Korea (KT).

Re:next frontier

[lamp540]

we're pretty much fucked.

Re:Let's translate in understandable metrics shall

[ScrewMaster]

Ten gigs a second is peanuts, but obviously there's more than one of these things ... and presumably the next generation will be even faster.

which means that it takes a stadium packed with 7200 naked NSA agents and a truck full of Kleenex tissues to check out all the videos in real-time...

Thanks for the image.

Watergate

[HermanAB]

Well, it seems Ol'Nixon wasn't so bad after all...

Before there was terror, there was greed

[unitron]

Notice the part of the article that cites another article from 1999?

Back then they were talking about how wonderful it was to spy on everyone so some internet traffic could be charged a higher rate to be passed along.

Nearer the top of the page it mentions that previous to September 11, 2001 they wanted to analyze everything to prevent "revenue leakage", which I take to be the industry term of art meaning "a failure to exploit loopholes and monopolies to screw everyone out of every last penny".

Now they can be greedy and "patriotic".

Re:China - you are WAY behind

[Anonymous Coward]

all the more reason to jump onto anonet http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net.nyud.net:8090/

give them the hell of encrypted data!
encrypt everything!
leave no stone unturned! encrypt the stone!

seriously its time to start looking at alternatives and anonet gives you that oppertunity to do so, if your government wants to fuck you, they will, just make it as hard as possible for them to do so, start resisting.

-
"my enemy is now my government"

Re:To look at it another way...

[Fantastic Lad]

When a country is unassailable from the outside, then its enemies can only attack from the inside.

When a country is run by psychopathic liars who steal elections through rigged voting machines and who abuse the laws to ensure their continued control over the public, their enemies ARE the people.

-FL

Re:If you are not plotting anything illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't value your most fundamental right: freedom. The U.S. is founded on a very simple idea: You have the right to be left alone.

And for some follow-up reading: U.S. Constitution, Amend. 4 ;)

Re:If you are not plotting anything illegal

[511pf]

If I'm not doing anything illegal, then they don't need to monitor me.

Blaming Bush is just taking the easy way out.

[Kadin2048]

Oh, yes, so the Clinton Administration was just purchasing some vast computer system, capable of datamining gobs of internet traffic ... and you don't think they were planning on using it as a wide net?

Wake up -- blaming this on anyone one administration, and certainly on any one person, is ridiculously shortsighted. Go ahead and blame it on Bush; the people that actually engineered this sort of policy, wherever they are in the NSA or various other government offices, will probably sell him down the river easily enough. Executives come and go every four or eight years, the attitudes that enable a project like this, even the raw technology itself, takes longer than that to put together.

If you give in to the temptation to blame Bush, along with all the other sheeple over at Daily Kos, you're really ignoring the majority of the problem. It's akin to seeing an iceberg in front of your ship, and sawing off the part you can see above the water and then saying the problem is gone. No it's not, all you did was get rid of the very thing that allowed you to see the problem. The thing that's going to kill you is still lurking below the water. (Ignoring the rather obvious fact that a proportionally equal amount of the iceberg would come back up out of the water as soon as you cut the top off.)

If you build a system that's capable of monitoring everyone's email, it's naive to think that it'll never be used. So the real problem here is that this system was constructed in such a way that it could be used indiscriminately, and to find an answer to why that happened, people have to be willing to look further back into the past than just G.W. Bush, something I'm not sure they're prepared to do. It's too easy and too satisfying to use something like this as political hay, rather than as the wake-up call it ought to be of how systemically out-of-control the government is, and has been for some time.

The behavior of our current and less-than-beloved President is a symptom of a problem, not its root cause.

Re:Blaming Bush is just taking the easy way out.

[Anonymous Coward]

  I'm with you bro. Right wingers and left wingers need to stop being such ideological drones for their "great leaders and causes" and think common sense for a moment.

    If nothing is done about this the end result will be the erasure of the 4th permanently. When the next bomb goes off... I wonder what right all the hysterical fear mongers will take next?

1898 Redux.

[Kadin2048]

Actually I think the reason why we go to war every decade or so has a lot more to do with the American public's desire for it than any demand by the defense contractors. True, they get some benefit from it, but the last few wars that the U.S. has entered into have been done with widespread public support.

I would argue that at the core of the American body politic's psyche there is a core of subconscious uneasiness and malaise, which is fed by the deep-rooted fear that as a nation we are becoming powerless, or at least less powerful. Therefore, every few years it becomes necessary to demonstrate -- less to the rest of the world than to ourselves -- that we are still the Alpha Country. And we do this, in the tradition of any insecure adolescent, by finding someone who is generally disliked and kicking the living shit out of them. It is preferable if the people getting the shit kicked out of them are non-white and non-Christian, since a very large percentage of America, although they may read the NY Times and listen to NPR on the drive in to work, value such lives much less than they do blonde-haired and blue-eyed European derivatives. (Because as diverse as we like to think we are as a country, the US is somewhere between 75-80% white, depending on whose statistics you believe, and people dislike seeing people who look like themselves getting killed on TV.)

In other posts I have said that I think that the closest historical parallel to the current war is the Spanish-American war of 1898. I will not rehash my entire argument here, but suffice it to say that the root causes of both conflicts lie outside the traditional domain of geopolitics: both were heavily dependent on public opinion, which was brilliantly used by a great number of independent actors working for their own gain. But at the heart of it all you have the American public, who as a group are not nearly as adverse to the idea of employing violence for its own sake than many individuals would claim they themselves believe.

Bingo

[KwKSilver]

It is dangerous for any government to be able to monitor its citizens this thoroughly, no matter what the original intent might be.

You hit the nail on the head, there. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Always has been ...always will be.

The answer?

[zenhkim]

> i have to agree that america needs war, but look at how the economy changes for the better everytime there is a war.

Reminds me of a debate I got into with one of those neo-con pro-biz warhawks just a few years ago about the (yet to occur) effects of the US war on Iraq. Mr. Warhawk was practically beaming about how occupying and rebuilding Iraq would pay for itself, how the US would reap enormous wealth from the influx of Iraqi oil, and that military spending would actually *strengthen* the American economy -- like the massive military expenditures during the Reagan Years! (Can you say "trickle-down theory"?)

I let him finish gushing about Ronnie Raygun, paused, then said, "Okay, sooooo.... war is the answer."

That kind of took the wind out of his sails. What I didn't say (but in retrospect really wish I had) was, "Therefore, the most important reason to wage a war in which hundreds to thousands of our American troops will be sent to a foreign land to fight and die ...ISN'T to defend our country, ISN'T to protect our liberty, and ISN'T to promote democracy ...it's to MAKE SOME MONEY?!?"

Alright, so let's accept the capitalist-pig view that war is all about feeding the money machine. How close (or how far) are we to breaking even on money spent on Iraq? How much is the federal deficit now? How much have gasoline prices changed, *and in what direction*? How much has consumer confidence and employee satisfaction improved (or worsened)?

Also, what of non-economic matters? How much safer (or more frightened) do we Americans feel about another attempted terrorist attack on US soil? How (un)successful have we been in establishing peace and starting a new democracy in Iraq? How much (or how little) respect do we have from the other nations of the world?

What of the veterans who return home (if they ever do -- for many US troops, tours of duty keep getting extended indefinitely)? If you develop PTSD and have screaming nightmares whenever you try to sleep, how much money is that worth? Or if you jump whenever a car backfires or a kid sets off a firecracker within earshot? Or if your mind keeps replaying the memory of a fellow soldier -- maybe a close buddy -- being shot in the head or blown to bloody bits? What amount of value, what price tag, can you possibly assign to that?

Btw, my closest friend is a retired Army master drill sergeant who served in Korea *and* Vietnam. I've seen him wake up in cold sweats during the middle of the night, and he keeps a bowie knife next to his pillow "just in case." Oh, and he despises Dubya. :-D

What are U worried About?

[hackus]

Its the same thing over again through out history.

100 Revolution
200 Citizens get peacetime
300 Citizens get stupid and complacent
400 Givernment Goons get the upper hand
500 People die, people get upset
600 Government gets out of control
700 goto 100

-Hackus

Re:Glad their monitoring terrorists

[realityfighter]

Huh? I don't know every detail of Clinton's administration, but I believe there was a good bit of Repub effort thrown into making people believe that he was some sort of underworld figure. They even started a rumor that he had murdered a former employee. So when I hear things like your IRS claim, my bullshit alarm goes off. Got any quotes to back that up?

Of course the people that criticize Bush now will be the first to criticise him if there's another attack. Why do you think they'd do anything different?