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Why Counter-Terrorism Is In Shambles
Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States, and he has answered frankly and in-depth. In addition, McGovern solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's biggest tip to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin's successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta."
The people directing the operations believe them to be ineffective? It's all smoke and mirrors, and nothing is really safer? If something was going to happen, it still is, regardless of the measures implemented today? Who could have guess this to be the case?
The reason counter-terrorism is in shambles is BECAUSE IT CAN WITHOUT CAUSING ANY PROBLEMS.
The number of actual terror attacks is so damn low, it is in the noise. So it doesn't matter if we have an uber-perfect counter-terrorism program or one that is total bullshit. The results are gonna be pretty much the same - barely any terrorist attacks.
In places where there is a substantial threat, like everybody's favorite example - Israel - they have to actually do something in order to make a difference. And even then the results are far from perfect - they have more successful terrorist attacks in Israel than we have just attempted attacks in the USA.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The answer to that first question (the first part anyway) could basically be summed up in one sentence: Read the goddamned 9/11 Commission Report. As one of probably seven Americans who actually did, I must say that it always surprised me just how flat it seemed to fall on the populous and government both. Sure, it made the NYT best-seller list for a bit, because hey, in 2004 what better coffee table book was there?
Sure, the first third of the report might be horrifying, and the middle third was extremely dry, but they were still extremely telling. What's more, the final section offered some suggestions, potential fixes, and forward-thinking plans that were excellent. Of course none of them were fully-fledged, but they were great jumping-off points. How many were put into action? Surely not too many, and five and a half years later we're still reeling from that inaction.
The main message in the report was that of any good relationship, communication, and that's precisely what hasn't been happening. McGovern hits a lot of good points, but I agree with him that this is all incredibly old. Not stale, because it hasn't been done, but old nonetheless. And lord knows holding those responsible responsible is a novel concept.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Look, the main thing is we forgot that terrorism is a tactic, and let ourselves get swept up in Fear.
From my personal experience (multiple counter-terrorism ops) what works is fairly simple: basic police detective work.
Torture doesn't work. Fear plays into what they want.
Stop living in fear and treat this as we treat natural disasters and food poisoning - don't overreact, don't reduce your freedom or liberty, but do allocate a PORTION of your police resources to proper detective work in tracking them down.
That works. None of what we've done so far does, sadly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Exactly what a terrorist would say!
Get 'im!
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm not a terrorist
That's not for you to decide.
Horay! A link to a troother blog, right on the front page!
I look forward to the day when editors are eliminated entirely from Slashdot, and "rights online" is just an RSS feed from WND, "idle" links to the front page of Prison Planet, and "science" selects a random page from Time Cube.
We could call it the Ministry of Love (or MiniLuv, for short).
That's always what I say whenever I hear about all this 4th Amendment crazy talk. I don't sell drugs, so what the hell do I care?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It was since 9/11 that it struck me: the US secret services, intelligence and security communities are... well, a bit dumb. The measures taken on planes after 9/11 should have been there before. Plain-clothes officers on planes were introduced only AFTER the fact. In Israel that has been common practice since the 70's. I don't even need to mention security theater at the airports in the US. And then the more recent Jordanian double-agent that kills 7 CIA officers in Afghanistan. Then there's the ridiculous list of no-fly passengers that is checked against a name!? Really? Now that's really hard to defeat. And it aggravates everybody who happens to have the same name. These just from the top off my head, but there are much more such stupendously silly things.
Beyond drastic, strategic changes in philosophy, the intelligence community in the US should be more imaginative, more broad-minded, more alert. Basically, more intelligent.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
What does this have to do with my rights online? I'm not a terrorist, so I don't think it effects me.
only n00bs choose to be counter terrorists, cause l33t gamers use the AK. Plus all the maps favor the hostage takers. If this doesn't effect you, I bet you've already been banned as a FC.
Two problems with this statement.
1 You can't be sure they are a terrorist while your punching them there have been several people tortured who were, in the end, found innocent.
2 Torture only makes the person say what they think will make you leave them alone. Maybe they confess to something they didn't do or maybe they give you bad intelligence.
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
Torture is just a violent jerk finding righteous excuses for unconscionable behavior and is counter productive every time.
i dont think it affects me
-
i dont think it has an effect on me
simply start and continue fixing real problems in the world and terrorist won't be able to gather a following of suicidal individuals or other recruits because they won't have a verifiable reason.
What the World Wants is not what the fewer than 1% of the world population wants.
Its really quite amazing when you consider there are near 7 billion people on this planet and what that equates to in less than one percent being war mongering leaders.
There is a long history here that needs to be taken into consideration... We are seeing a paradigm shift in our government that is long overdue. It used to be that the government had to protect paper documents, "eyes only", and the biggest threat were photocopiers and miniature cameras... not any more.
I wrote about this transformation many years ago. Is it any wonder why the NSA is being brought up and groomed to help protect the critical information assets that the United States has?
From my post:
HumInt/SigInt:
Human Intelligence, CIA
Signal Intelligence, NSA
The English have been masters at the spy trade for centuries. In WWII, the United States felt that it should get into the act and turned to the English for guidance.
With their tutelage, the CIA became a formidable tool against the Soviet threat throughout the cold war. We had clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders. Gathering intelligence became a methodical science... then, once the Soviet Union collapsed, the clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders went with it.
The growth of the internet created an atmosphere wherein information and 'intelligence' became a commodity. Then the emergence of an enemy that is not only difficult, if not impossible, to clearly define but who also operates entirely without borders. The polar opposite from what the CIA were trained to do.
Not only has this rule-set reset turned the CIA upside-down, it has rendered it all but useless. The UK isn't doing much better either. The problem is that western society itself is at odds with the rules required to make an effective spy agency. Our open government(s), free access to information, laws against spying on citizens and so forth are what both protect our civil liberties as well as create the environment in which our enemies can plot against us.
The CIA knew about al Qaeda operators operating in the USA prior to 9/11, yet did nothing to notify the FBI. This is because of the opposing nature of each agency. The CIA finds a criminal and wants to string them along to see what intelligence they can uncover by monitoring them. When the FBI finds a criminal, they want to string them up. From the CIA perspective, the FBI sure knows how to screw up an investigation and destroy your intelligence network.
The CIA is now dysfunctional to the point of uselessness. In fact, there isn't a single effective spy agency in the western world. The current battle we're fighting and the enemy we face is one that cannot be defeated by military might, it is a war that MUST be fought using intelligence.
So, the administration turned to the only other agency with experience in gathering and monitoring enemies. It also happens that this agency is experts at SigInt, as opposed to the HumInt. The problem is that the NSA is forbidden by law from spying on American Citizens, UNLESS they are monitoring overseas communications. This exception has always been allowed, no warrant necessary. There is no law that states that I have the constitutional right to conspire with enemies overseas.
No other nation even comes close to the SigInt capabilities of the NSA...
It is imperative that the NSA get on top of this nations information security. A staggering number of government agencies are still not even behind firewalls! There is so much bureaucratic stagnation that nothing meaningful has been done to secure this nations governmental infrastructure.
Finally, they are putting an agency in charge that actually *knows* something about security. I applaud this effort wholeheartedly.
Regards,
Joel Helgeson
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
What if they don't want you to address the causes, maybe the causes are a natrul effect of how business is done. Dealing with causes means changing how you do business.
The so called acts of "terrorism" against the USA, could be called by another name. They are the resistance. The United States is an empire. it's ok, it's not a bad thing in itself. Embrace what you are. So, there is a resistance. A small, stupid, disorganized, and full of religious fanatics resistance. The fact that the resistance isn't bigger doesn't mean there are not a lot of other people that would like to resist, they just don't think blowing up buildings is the way to resist the empire.
So, when you say "Anti-terrorism" you actually mean "Anti enemies of the empire". What the government is doing is chasing the enemies of the empire. It is doing so using the worth methodologies: fear, violence, persecution, surveillance. And what the US is accomplishing is far from stopping that resistance: It actually gets more people to join in, and causes even more hate against your country.
The UK was once a Huge Empire, and they conquered most of the known world. And nobody hated them as much as everyone hates the US. And many times, what they did was actually far worse than the actions of the US. Then, why is the US hated so much? two reasons: One, people don't like self-righteous fucks. Do what you must, but don't pretend to be the land of the free and home of the whatever anymore. You are an empire. Conquer and STFU. Stop trying to sell the "American" way to everyone. Second: Conquer, but don't destroy. The UK conquered half the world, and now those places are known as Australia, The United States, Canada ... The US, OTOH, conquered Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and those places are the same shitholes they were before. They are actually worse now after you screwed them up. Want their oil? Conquer them, get their oil, and in the process establish there and build trains and schools. The Colony model works, the big country takes the resources and cheap work that they need, and the small startup country grows and learns. Eventually, it becomes independent.
But if you keep conquering, screwing the place up, and then leaving, with the sole goal of selling more weapons and controlling the price of oil, people will hate you mroe and more, and they'll continue trying to blow the fuck out of your country.
Being a self righteous fuck and saying "why does the world hate us" doesn't help. Realizing what you are, and acting in consequence does.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Because the FBI and CIA are wasting huge resources tracking down and chasing CD and DVD counterfeiters acting as the private police for a group of corporations who have convinced the governments of the world, through extensive bribes, that they're obsolete business models are vital to the modern world.
Who is John Galt?
I'm basically on board with McGovern, but some of the particulars stuck out to me as half-baked: "Add Washington's propping up of dictatorial, repressive regimes in order to secure continuing access to oil and natural gas -- widely (and accurately) seen as one of the main reasons for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan." I think it's true that the US props up dictatorial, repressive regimes in the Middle East and southern Asia (Kuwait, Pahlavi's Iran, ...). I think it's true that we would never have gone to war in Kuwait/Iraq in 1991, Afghanistan in 2001, or Iraq in 2003, if this hadn't been an oil-producing region. This is clearest in the case of Kuwait, and also reasonably clear in the 2003 Iraq invasion, since the WMD pretext was obviously bogus. The least clear one is Afghanistan, which really did have at least some reasonable justification in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- although if the region had never had oil, it would have made more sense to invade Saudi Arabia, from which 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists originated.
But how can McGovern say that "one of the main reasons for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan" was "to secure continuing access to oil and natural gas?" This doesn't make any sense. Saddam Hussein was exporting oil before we invaded in 2003. The invasion devastated oil production. And Afghanistan has never been a big oil producer.
I think it would be more accurate to say that we went to war in Kuwait in 1991 in order to stabilize the Middle East oil producing region, and we went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 as knee-jerk reactions to the 9/11 attacks (which is pretty pathetic, because the whole purpose of terrorism is basically to cause a knee-jerk reaction).
He makes a big deal out of how nobody admits that one of the main motivations for terrorist attacks on the US is anger about Israel. This is undeniably true. The problem is, what the heck can we do about it now? We tried to hand democracy and territory to the Palestinians on a silver platter, and they messed up. Is there some obvious solution to the Israel problem that I'm missing?
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Clearly there is an axe to grind here, probably for more than what Tenet deserves. That said, what is left out of this critique is the failings of policy makers who in fact determine what the intelligence community focuses on. When policy makers (be they politicians or career employees) focus on short term intelligence needs the IC must reallocate resources to address those wants. Inevitably this is at the expense of longer term intelligence gathering and asset development. Then when something does go wrong or a situation blows up the IC is left scrabling to 'advise' the policy makers on subjects they really do not have sufficiently extensive information on. See Iran, UBL, Iraq. The author does, however, point out how policy decisions made by elected politicians and career govt employees, such as perceived unbalanced support of Israel, can create unfavorable outcomes. What the IC had to say about possible ramifications of those decisions is of course affected by what intelligence they have previously developed on the subject which may have glaring holes when it lacks strategic, long term focus.
Terrorists are trolls.
Don't feed the trolls, it's fucking simple.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Air_Marshal_Service
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
just let them do what they want, namely, kill each other, we simply cannot put an American MP on every crossroad of the world.
BZZZ. Thanks for playing.
We want them to catch the bad guys - AND WHEN THEY FAIL to do that job, hold them accountable. Which wasn't clear in the summary, but was clear in the article.
George Tenet was the CIA director. CIA's job is to get all of the intelligence information in a CENTRAL agency (who knew?). Mandated by congress at it's creation after WWII.
9/11 happened. CIA blew it, and there was no consequence for the people We The People hired. Tenet wasn't fired for NOT DOING HIS GODDAMN JOB.
Instead of holding the CIA accountable for their failure, we create Homeland Security, National terrorism center, TSA, Patriot Act, so-on and so-forth, ad infinitum. We declare "War on Terror" - which will end up like the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs. Generate a lot of money for a lot of technology and industry without ever providing a path to victory.
Bureaucracy at it's finest.
Too bad we didn't have a President. He could've said "CIA blew it. Tenet, you're fired. Let's get someone in here who can be bothered to be responsible."
Instead we have all of the BS that's been justified in the name of security, and we're worse off (security-wise) than we were on 9/12/2001.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
You mean like the one Cypher had with Agent Smith? Yes! I see how that works!
Especially if you keep redefining the word. Simple as that.
What if this was never about winning a war (on a word) but rather redirecting attention from the war on human rights and personal freedoms (many of which defined in the Constitution everyone loves foaming about), in the interest of money-driven slavery and mass-mind control?
Now, put *this* in your pipe and smoke it :)
Or, wake up and get off the grid.
Actually, I would say that's right on. Congress, the whole darned institution, not just your O'Reilly-esque political Punch and Judy show, should be held accountable for any failure(s) of the CIA.
They oversee it. They order it. Michael Scheuer smartly said, during the hearings on extraordinary rendition, that a "half-assed bureaucrat like [himself] wouldn't do anything without the approval of Congress."
I wanted to stand up and applaud him when I saw it. We kidnapped people with Congressional authority, and it is amazing that nobody's been held accountable for their incredible lack of ethics and malfeasance. There needs to be an investigation.
--
Toro
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
Torture is just a violent jerk finding righteous excuses for unconscionable behavior and is counter productive every time.
Coming soon: Inglorious basterds 2: revenge is a dish best served medium rare.
This time, an American shock troop focuses not on brutally killing Nazis, but instead on serving them excellent steak dinners.
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
I heard it a different way from a family member who was actually there and served in his division's intelligence unit. He said that the most effective way to get information out of high ranking POWs was to inform them that we'd turn them over to the Soviets if they failed to cooperate with us.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's been the world's complaint for years. Israel is big and bad enough to look after itself and doesn't need free bombs with "made in USA" written on them to make Syrians, Lebanese and their own citizens angry at the USA after the bombs kill their children. Indonesia, East Timor, the Phillipines and most of Latin America has suffered from poor US intelligence getting manipulated by the unscrupulous. They pushed the line "give me help or the commies get in" or "thanks for coming to my country, here's a big donation to your party Mr Ford, we invade tommorrow before they turn into commies (1975)" and played the US like a banjo.
It's the stupid little mistakes that create the mess - propping up an evil bastard like the Shah was a mistake but letting him into the country after he was deposed was the thing that made an enemy out of Iran. Similarly going into Lebanon to "show the flag" in a poorly conceived operation convinced the world that the USA would cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Sending some token warships into the Iran-Iraq war was a fiasco that did nothing but make people very angry (no minesweeper so the ships hid behind the tankers they were supposed to protect, US ships attacked by Iraqi allies, and an airliner shot down that provoked a revenge attack on a PanAm 747 over Scotland).
Sometimes it's better to sit back and watch instead of dabbling at helping one thug beat another. The real lesson of this mistakes is to take things seriously when action is taken - no stupid halfhearted "show the flag" exercises that just get people killed for a minor political advantage. It should be a wake up call when the guy you've been backing orders a car bombing to kill a political opponent in Washington D.C. (Pinochet 1976), but it wasn't.
He's talking about Saudi Arabia so it's not really half-baked.
The Iraq war had a lot of reasons, most of which are stupid and to the detriment of the USA even if they help individuals and a few corporations, and to this point it's failed at the sensible one (site for US base which he refers to later). I'm surprised that leading retired military figures think that Iraq will eventually settle down like post-war Japan but that Afganistan is a basket case because the press is generally reporting things the other way. I think we should listen to the experts like McGovern.
As for the bit about causes, it makes it a lot easier to identify potential terrorists if nothing else. It doesn't mean it has to be fixed.
But how can McGovern say that "one of the main reasons for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan" was "to secure continuing access to oil and natural gas?" ?" This doesn't make any sense. Saddam Hussein was exporting oil before we invaded in 2003. The invasion devastated oil production. And Afghanistan has never been a big oil producer.
You're thinking "nation-state" and not "regional".
We are not interested in anybody's particular oil fields -- not Iraq's, not Iran's, etc. What we want to ensure is that there is a free market, which means a free flow, of oil and natural gas, throughout the region. As you may know, there is a big narual gas pipeline being built through Afghanistan, which will connect the Ukraine and other big natural gas fields to the west. We want to make sure that no President Hussein or President Ahmadinejad can distrup the regional market over there, and that multi-national corporations are free to do their business. And we need military bases so nobody can even think about acting up.
The mafia boss in the neighborhood doesn't want to run anybody's business. They just want to make sure that business is happening, and they're getting the protection money, and nobody else is. Governments and their armies are the goons, and the Corporations are the bosses.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Legalize terror?
You're on the right track. Torture backfires in a variety of ways on a regular basis. When it comes to effective interrogation, I always like to cite the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494.shtml
:(){
The terrorists were manufactured.
The public is persistent and scrappy, and they refuse to let up. More information keeps cropping up and the threads keep expanding and the picture gets more and more clear. So any beliefs one might have settled on last year or three years ago or earlier based on the available information and spin at the time always need to be updated. That's the way of knowledge; Love it or lie to yourself, (and pretend that Popular Mechanics isn't run by cherry-picking true-believers of God and Country). Anyway, this latest has been put through the crucible since November of last year. . .
The forum at "Pilots for 9-11 Truth" is worth lurking in if you want to understand how the flight data recorder info has been examined and what juicy details it has revealed. (Basically, that the government story is complete horsepoop.)
So this whole question of so-called "terrorism" is really a big, bad and messy joke.
-FL
That you are right, the NSA are signals intelligence kings. However you are dealing with a lot of groups that use little to no monitorable signals. They are very old fashion which means that the NSA isn't so useful. Human intelligence is really what you need for things like that. However people don't like it. The NSA is "clean" intelligence. It is just computers and satellite dishes and so on that passively sniff up data. Nice and clean, few ethical issues there. Human intelligence isn't like that. It can mean having people do unsavory things to penetrate groups so that they can report what is going on. It can mean dealing with people you'd really prefer not to.
However, it is the kind of thing that is really needed when it comes to terrorism. Trying to monitor information goes only so far when you are dealing with people that may not even have phones, much less computers.
I like this comment:
Quote;
“Sen. Gorton,” I asked, “I don’t quite understand all this talk alleging that ‘No one is in charge of the intelligence community.’ You are surely aware that, by act of Congress, there is such a person, and right now that happens to be Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.”
The avuncular Gorton tiptoed up to me, put his right hand around my shoulder, and with a conspiratorial whisper said, “Yes, Ray, of course I know that. We all know that. But George would not take charge; he would not do what he was supposed to.”
EndQuote
Exactly, if you put political wieners in charge of any department you are going to cut the professionals off at the knees.
It used to be the deputy directors that were the real operational control of the organization. This is true of nearly every federal agency, you want very talented people in the #2 slots (several deputies, for different departments). The "talent" that reports up to the Deputy Directors need to have confidence that someone above them is going to be able to pull the pieces together and make a friggen decision. What has been happening is you get a new director at every political cycle and they do a wholesale swapout of administration 3-4 levels down in the organization. Then all you have are political hacks who are not smart enough (or experienced) to champion a course of action. IE... put a bomb in someone's smoke-stack.
We do not want the decades of Hoover style FBI. That was a man who clearly had delusions of his own grandeur and was so powerful that presidents were afraid to kick him out. It took Hoover dying before change could happen.
Having the top slot filled by a political appointee is fine if they know that the strength of the organization is THE LAYERS BENEATH them. Too many sit in their big comfy offices and think that suddenly they have the wisdom of the seven sages at their disposal.
I do not care what party, what president, what administration... they all do this game.
Tisha Hayes
If someone proposed that we spend a trillion dollars on building lightning rods around the country to save people from possibly being struck by lighting, you'd probably say, wow that's an incredibly dumb idea. But yet, the reality is, this incredibly dumb idea would likely end up saving more lives than what we've spent on the "war on terror".
Americans need to get a grip, we don't need the paternalistic government to protect us, after all on the last two airplane bombing attempts, it was the passengers that jumped the would be bombers. Let's all just relax a little, ask the politicians to stop spending money hand over fist in the name of safety, and let us live our lives.
If terrorism ever becomes a real problem, we can revisit this...
You only quoted half the sentence. The whole sentence was quoted in the GP post: "Add Washington's propping up of dictatorial, repressive regimes in order to secure continuing access to oil and natural gas -- widely (and accurately) seen as one of the main reasons for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan." So he's not talking about Saudi Arabia, he's talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.
Find free books.
CIA / Homeland Security / NSA / FBI *are* the sponsors of Islamic terrorism.
And the above came from a paranoid.
Believe it.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Shhh... don't say it so loud.
The infidels will not believe what you tell them.
No. They always have that "I am perfectly safe here, no one gonna want to kill me because I ain't hating nobody" feeling.
Not even thousands of their equally innocent infidels brothers and sisters got slaughtered in yet another attack can shake their believe that "They Are Safe".
I mean, how many times the Islamic terrorists have struck the infidels ?
* London subway bombing
* WTC twin tower incident
* Madrid Train Station bombing
* Riots and car burning in France
* Riots by African Muslims in Italy
* Cold blooded murder of a famous movie director in Denmark
* Killing of 7 American soldiers inside an Army Camp in USA
There are more, of course, such as
* Bali Bombing (Twice)
* Jakarta Marriot Hotel Bombing (Twice)
* Pakistan Hotel Bombing
* Bombay Massacre
* Westerners kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic terrorists, in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Yemen, among other places
But them infidels just do not care.
They seems to think that they are safe, but in fact, they are already exposed to a lot of danger.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
I heard it a different way from a family member who was actually there and served in his division's intelligence unit. He said that the most effective way to get information out of high ranking POWs was to inform them that we'd turn them over to the Soviets if they failed to cooperate with us.
Doesn't it make you proud that now WE'RE the "Soviets?" :-/
I mean, how many times the Islamic terrorists have struck the infidels ?
Holy shit! World wide your examples killed well under the number of people that die in two months on the road in the USA.
And I should be shitting my pants because of that? Get the fuck outta here you innumerate slob.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah, what a summary.
*clap* *clap* *clap*
There people, thats the meaning of terrorism, create terror. Now you have to think: "hey, this guy is right, we have been owned several times but because my neighborhood its so peaceful I cannot see beyond; because nothing out of ordinary happens from -the house to the car to the office to the car to the home-... shame on me, I forget so easily but the next time I can do something hummm INVADE IRAN!!!"
(I know you're being sarcastic, I hope you know I'm being sarcastic)
* Riots and car burning in France
And, btw, your citing of the riots in france as the result of islamic terrorists is total bullshit. A massive display of ignorance on your part that only shows how ignorant you are of the real world.
Other than initial media hype, its well understood that the riots were not about religion - nobody was running around saying "lets burn those cars in the name of Allah!" The riots were all about economics - the underclass living in the ghettos getting pushed around one time too many. Just like the race riots in the US were not the caused by people being black but rather people being marginalized. A society that doesn't deal equitably with all members is the root cause of riots like those - not religion and not race.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Oh, and we executed Japanese commanders for authorizing the waterboarding of POWs during WWII. Can you explain why Bush and Cheney both shouldn't be in front of a firing squad?
Actually, for the most part, unlike the NAZIs, we really let the Japanese off the hook for World War II. We rooted out the entire German ruling class and pretty much destroyed Prussia. In Japan, we kept the ruling class. We kept Hirohito, we kept a lot of the players behind the scenes. The only guy that really got it was Tojo, who took the blame for the war, really, but really, the Emperor ordered it. And, we hanged Yamashita, I believe, and that was because of the Bataan death march, and, maybe, just maybe, because we took his gold.
This is my sig.
Bullshit.
Why have terrorists launched attacks against non-US entities then? In poor countries even.
You could look into rangers. Someone I met recently was obsessed about these guys and was intending to join. They tend to take missions involved with sniping and are extremely cautious. Proactol Review
Oh, and we executed Japanese commanders for authorizing the waterboarding of POWs during WWII.
Your ignorance is cramping my conversation. You're so cute with your moral equivalency shtick. Lookee here, pendejo. Did you know that the Japanese Imperial Army, its fucking order-following people, vivisected its EPWs---fuck, not even regular or irregulars, just the populace that made good cannon fodder for its depravity.
explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic. "The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese Army unit in China in World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming.
Into the present, Japanese participants to the atrocity justify, en masse, the incalculable immorality as the moral, ethical equivalency of pedestrian war duty. They have you beat in the rationalizing department, but you make a good protege. Don't let make me catch you in my neck of the woods, I'll in vivo your ass.
Good point. Wanna hear the bad news? I just read through some other posts here, and I realized that I probably didn't vote against everyone who was in office then, or as soon after as I could.
I'm on the hook for not holding people these responsible, too.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
This whole thread is a perfect example of the fact that Americans can't even rationally discuss anything with each other anymore due to their simplistic political dichotomy. What the hell is going on in that country?
Those who attacked the US on 9/11, and those who subsequently commit acts of terrorism against Americans are not trying to kill Americans.
So many of the tactics being employed against terrorism are put in place because there is a widespread fear that "They're out to kill us! If we leave them alone, or if we don't actively combat terrorism, more innocent American civilians will die."
This is the wrong mindset, and the wrong problem to focus resources on. The terrorists attacking the US are not out to kill Americans. They do not want to "kill the infidels!". They are opposed to the expansive, capitalist, commercialized society America is and represents. They are opposed to "the Man", as we like to say. Our Man. The westernized Man.
By committing acts of terrorism, the attackers aim to weaken the unity of western society, disrupt our way of life, turn us against our governments, have the internal security of our countries break down to a ridiculous piece of theater, have us live in fear, and have western society in general disrupted as much as possible.
The people attacking the US are smarter than us (they're probably engineers), and are not motivated by the primitive religious craziness that everyone seems to think. "Terrorism" (as this is now the concrete thing we're fighting) is a carefully planned tactic to disrupt western society, and not simply a plan to kill as many Americans as possible.
And they are, quite clearly, making some headway.
There are two ideas in that very long sentence, that's why I only quoted half of it. Also the Saudis were terrified of Saddam. Consider it in that context.
Please read that part of the paragraph again. Do you see what I mean now? If you come to a completely different conclusion please let me know. Keep in mind that there doesn't seem to be a lot of oil in Afganistan and there were a lot of surveys done in the 1960s, but there is the Saudi tie in there too (Bin Laden wants to overthrow the Saudi government, that's how he started remember). So now you'll see I read it as "doing all this crap to keep in with the Saudis" and it sounds a lot less half baked. That's really exactly what is meant when "regional stablity" is mentioned.
The way I see it there were many reasons anyway - oil interests, longlasting neocon indignigation and timing of the election were minor contributing factors . Just because oil is mentioned doesn't make him a fruitcake. Oil on it's own in hindsight would be an incredibly stupid reason if only because there is more of the stuff going into Iraq than out, plus a US corporation could have taken over the Iraqi oil industry without an invasion anyway.
The history of the world is 10000 religions leading their adherents to extinction in religious wars. All religions do eugenics; they breed their people to be supportive of and subservient to the administration. This leads to evolutionary losers who must be culled to maintain the successful adaptations to the environment. Eugenically modified populations cannot compete. So the eugenically modified populations are attacking the superior adaptations in an altruistic suicide to remove themselves from the gene pool. It is only our subservience to the godless religion of political correctness that interferes with our duty to our species. Of course, this godless religion is also doing eugenics on us to breed us into submission, so in the future we will become the subspecies to be culled. Nature always wins, thankfully.
For
?
OK, that's another tenner into the Wikileaks coffers.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
... is such a lonely word.
everyone is so untrue.
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see us attacking Egypt? No. Lebanon? No. The UAE? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Instead, we attacked Iraq (a total WTF) and Afghanistan, a country uninvolved in the attack; no nationals, no funding.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries. A, B, C, D, etc.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because you don't agree with how they do things, then holy chickenshit, you'd *really* better duck, because there's a whole line of countries that can say that about us.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because they're screwed up internally, that is, not obeying their constitution or other founding papers... yeah, you guessed it, duck. because we're so far away from our constitution it can't be seen from here.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
yes you are
You say the USA is not an empire but Israel is a client state of the USA? It seems to me that empires still do exist but the forms of power are a little more subtle than in the Roman or British Empire. People are not excluded from positions of power if they are not Roman citizens - though it could be argued that you'd be marginalised from positions of power if you don't speak English in 'client states'. The British flag is not run up flag poles right across the Empire - though there are preferential trading agreements and even pricing for 'client states' and promises of economic and other support.
I think geopolitics still exists but it has become a little more subtle. To be fair of course this doesn't just refer to the USA but many other countries. It strikes me that aid money - long term, not disaster support, can be used as a means of establishing and maintaining influence.
So hows the Buddhist eugenics program doing? Or the Shinto one?
Religions do not use Eugenics, they prefer indoctrination. The quality of the subjects ancestry matters little until you get to the higher ranks (See: Nepotism). Abrahamic, in fact most religions will take anyone as long as they are young enough or naive enough to be indoctrinated.
Eugenics, if we could call it that was a social construct rather then a religious one. In most society the commoners were separated from the lords (and the slaves were separated again), commoners had to marry commoners, lords married other lords and slaves didn't marry for the most part. Each group was only permitted to socialise with it's own group. religion had little to do with who was or was not permitted to marry. This was not eugenics as we think of it, partners were not paired for favourable traits, partners chose their own partners albeit were limited to their social class. The only religion that may classify as eugenics is Hinduism, if you've ever had an Indian friend tell you what it's like to find a wife in India, they have all these rules that must be followed (E.G. they must be born in a certain month) but very few of the rules actually pertain to a specific goal (breeding a better warrior/thinker/servant).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
1) After the first gulf war, Saddam kicked out all the US/UK based companies, and got for example the French Total to produce the oil instead. The first thing that happened after the 2003 invasion was that Total and friends got kicked out, and Shell, BP and Exxon got the rights to produce oil back.
Also the US was worried that in the long term their bases in Saudi Arabia would not be tolerated, so they were looking for another spot.
2) As far as afganistan was concerned, it probably has something to do with the "Trans Afganistan Pipeline" and such. See the AC reply to your post.
Sorry that I do not provide sources, I don't have the time to google for them now. Maybe someone else can.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Someone stated wisely, in a previous comment, that you should attack disease's roots, not symptoms.
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The fundamental origins of current islamic terrorism lay in old Cold War's "dirty" strategies carried out by both blocks (mainly USSR and USA), in order to undermine the enemy's stability.
- USA funded and supported today's talibans (and Ben Laden) against USSR, and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein (against Iran). I would not be surprised if any Western help (of any kind) had supported Chechenian "terrorists".
- USSR has continuously supported Palestinian terrorism and Iran's activities (against Israeli and American influence in the Middle East). The support from Russia to current anti-american parties and forces in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Cuba is also evident.
Saying that Cold War is ended just because the flags of some countries changed colour is just a joke. It will not end as long as irresponsible politicians and military commanders, with psycho minded profiles, keep ruling the most powerful countries in the world (same for their allies). And as long as people do not use their heads when voting.
Regarding the statements above, it is highly probable the real truth has not been told about Irak and Afghanistan wars. Warning hostile nations might have been another one of the objectives to be achieved. You may call them "preventive" wars.
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On the other hand, Islamic terrorism is not the first one to be used as a political / lobby influence weapon. USA (with many citizens with Irish origins) has tradicionally given a "mild" treat and media coverage - just to say it softly - to IRA terrorists. More or less the same has happend with France and other countries - USA too - to Spanish ETA terrorist group. In the case of ETA, France began to fight its criminal activities when they started to cause harm to French prestige and security.
You have the funny example of "The Jackal" remake: a former IRA terrorist (Richard Gere) and his former girlfriend and ETA terrorist are presented as old warriors for indepence, who help FBI in their investigations. Well, you must call them "terrorists" when they perform massive killings, kidnapping, extortion and other activities of the kind.
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Now comes another funny example with body scanners for airports. A "fair" meassure just to avoid incidents like those not prevented because of intelligence agencies' incompetence.
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As a summary, I think:
- Security threats should not be either overestimated or underestimated: just take appropriate measures actually proved "and not believed" to be effective.
- Don't feed ANY beast. If you think you are going to keep control you are underestimating it. You asshole. You may not be as intelligent as you think you are just because you attended a military academy or expensive university (if any). Common sense cannot be learnt but at your own home.
- Act honestly, and you will save your own reputation around the world, and all those bitches will have less stupid reasons to gather stupid dumbasses willing to blow themselves to shit.
- That includes providing your citizens with fair and enough information, and wasting their money wisely.
- If you are a citizen, watch less TV and read more books. You may start reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
You mean like the one Cypher had with Agent Smith? Yes! I see how that works!
No, that was chicken! Whole different story
how long until
Ooh. Go to Scotland and say it is your favorite part of england. Hope you can run fast. Then do it in the wrong parts of northern Ireland.
Many Indians (the sub continent, not the race the USA practically wiped out) fought WITH the nazi's to dismantle the British empire. The palestines worked together with the nazi's as well, again to get the British out (and this is one of the reasons britain has had such a dubious role in the entire conflict, basically both Israelis and Palestinians fought them).
Now the british empire or commonwealth is not all overrun by hate, but neither is the US "empire". Why do you think the US does so well with its movies? Because people around the world love them. If the US was truly so hated, McDonalds etc would not be able to sell their products world-wide.
And of course, your logic fails to account for terrorist attacks in other parts of the world. Why all the attacks in Iraq against muslims? Why does Morocco have a fence? Why is India attacked by terrorists from Pakistan?
No, you got pet peeve with the US, fine but it is clouding your vision. The enemy of my enemy is not your friend.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Village Idiot let 9/11 happen. It's laughably obvious. He earned his place in history right next to Hitler, et al.
Honest. That's it.
Nobody in a government bureaucracy ever gets fired, no matter how much they screw-up. So, when the pundits and the politicians huff and puff, all the bureaucrats do is roll their eyes and go back to business as usual.
Go all the way down the chain of the command, and FIRE every single person who touched this mess. Only then will you get the bureaucrats' attention.
'Nuff said.
Regards;
Only if you have no sense of perspective or have never opened a history book. The Soviets took over 90,000 German prisoners at Stalingrad. Only 5,000 returned to Germany after the war was over. You do the math. Then admit that a comparison between the modern day United States and Stalinist Soviet Union is absurd on the face.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sorry, but your interpretation in terms of Saudi Arabia really doesn't make sense to me. The 1991 invasion of Iraq was primarily aimed at taking Kuwait away from Iraq. Sure, Saudi Arabia wasn't happy about having Iraqi troops on their border, but that was secondary. The link gets even weaker when you talk about the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was primarily an attempt to destroy Al Qaeda, and Bush apparently wanted to do that even before 9/11.
Hmm...well, I wasn't that familiar with Bin Laden's bio, but looking at the WP article, he actually started out by fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. When the US invaded Iraq in 1991, he criticized the Saudis for letting troops on American soil, so they banished him.
And when you come to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I really don't think it holds up if you try to analyze it as an action to protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam. Iraq's military capacity had been devastated in 1991. The WMD thing was obviously a baldfaced lie cooked up by Cheney as a pretext. (If they'd believed in it themselves, that would be hard to reconcile with the Valerie Plame affair and Powell's admission that he lied to the UN.) Since Bush and Cheney knew that Iraq had a degraded conventional military capacity and no WMDs, it doesn't make sense to say that the reason for the invasion was to protect Saudi Arabia. I think a more realistic assessment of the motivation for the war is that it was a political reaction to 9/11, based on an impulse to take military action as a response to do something -- anything -- in order to be seen as striking back forcefully. W was probably also predisposed to go along with Cheney because of a family grudge against Saddam, because of the Iraqi assassination plot in 1993.
Find free books.
Despite my being uneasy about the term "illegal combatant" and the government deciding who that is, I find it shocking that all allegedly innocent people being persecuted by the states turn out to be an enemy of the USA at least in spirit - even before there persecution. As a German I'm a bit more familiar with the El-Masri case and I while he's not a criminal (except for acts of non-terrorism related arson), his resume clearly tells the story of an anti-western loser who has cheated himself a German passport. You could call him an enemy if he wasn't so pathetic. Is it really so difficult to find an innocent victim of American aggression that is a bit more innocent that that? Maybe even pro-American?
Here is what I got out of this whole thread...The US should: 1. Educate all poor people of the world. 2. Dismantle some, most, all of our intelligence agencies. 3. Fire all politicians. 4. Don't fear or worry about terrorism. So what planet do you guy live on? Great ideas but how do you make them happen. How about some solutions that we can actually do in the next 10 years.
1. The US is just a name for a big whack of people living in one place with an out-of-control government. It's not obligated to, and probably can't do anything cohesive or useful. Which means. . .
2. People have to educate themselves. This becomes more possible for more people with each step forward YOU take as an individual person. You are part of a greater whole and your impact upon that whole happens in ways which are non-linear. So educate yourself and you'll be doing your bit. The rest happens pretty much on automatic so long as you obey your inner drives and do the right thing, whatever it happens to be in any given moment.
3. Intelligence agencies are the enemy, and you can't dismantle them. So you'll just have to operate along your own path and let them do their thing along theirs. In the end, so long as you continually absorb knowledge, they can't stop you or anybody else from growing powerful. You might die a few times, but those are just blips in the overall scheme of things. In the end, those who seek to control out of and through fear and insanity undo themselves. It's a universal truth.
4. Politicians are just puppets and villains. You can't really fire them or even replace them particularly well because the system is so utterly corrupted from within. (The more you learn about it, the more hopeless you realize it is). Again, the solution is to just get on with your own learning and step around their boundaries when they put them in front of you. In the end, the only power they hold is that of withholding knowledge, so the more you learn the weaker their hold over you becomes. And it's geometric in growth. The more you learn, the faster you learn. It's those first starting steps which are so difficult, and where the fight is taking place. It's easy to keep people ignorant if they don't even realize that they are ignorant.
5. Other people who are on the same path; when you start to get into a groove with others and network and criticize with an aim to overcoming ego and false knowledge, then the strength of that signal increases, again, geometrically.
That's how it's done, and now is as good a time as any to begin.
-FL
So? Roman Polanski was living in France for years; when the French refused to hand him over, did we attack them? No. Why? Because they had nothing to do with what he was accused of -- although they were in sympathy with the man. That was where he lived; not the source of the issue. Likewise, Bin Ladin was living somewhere sympathetic to his ideas; this is neither a surprise, nor a justification to attack the country.
Other than Saudi Arabia itself, I doubt sufficient cause could be found in the 9/11 attacks to make war on any other country; even Saudi Arabia is iffy. There's a very strong argument that can be made that 9/11 was not a state-sponsored action, but an action that came from, and was funded by, religious fundamentalists within the Saudi state. Who were living there with the happy compliance of the state, as per usual. Certainly there was no justification at all to attack Afghanistan. It would be like attacking France for sheltering Polanski. That's a matter for politicians, negotiation, etc. Which may or may not work.
And again, if refusing to turn someone over is justification for attacking a country, then the US is open to legitimate attack from Japan and Germany and several others for recent actions. And *certainly* if the killing of 3,000 is justification, then the US is open to attack from other countries, Vietnam and Iraq being two that come immediately to mind.
You think? How many innocent Iraqis is Bush responsible for murdering? A fuckload more than 3000. You see us turning him over to the Iraqi people? Oh, wait. Ol' Bushie-boy is an ex-president with his own security detail, residing in comfort. Guess we're not going to turn him over to the Iraqis after all, are we? And make no mistake, the man is a war criminal.
What about the Vietnam war, started on the basis of an incident we FABRICATED, the gulf of tonkin incident, how many Vietnamese did we kill in that war? Anyone turn over Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who authorized that particular fuckery? No. Huh. Funny thing, eh? We definitely have our share of war criminals, pal.
It is indefensible.
You're just repeating yourself now; this argument has already been disposed of.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't have the statistics to hand, so for comparison perhaps you can tell me what proportion of the prisoners taken by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan have been repatriated?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sure I have. Here's how they work:
MIC, in case you don't get it, is "Military Industrial Complex"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Neither of these people caused us to make war on Afghanistan, so they're off subject. I didn't say that superstitious middle easterners were the only people that deserved disdain; I was simply talking about the ones that were relevant to the discussion - which was about making war on Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am perfectly ready to say that Islam and Christianity both breed violence on a regular and dependable basis, because both explicitly encode both glorification and encouragement of it in their belief systems. I am perfectly ready to condemn any such act. But I don't think such acts are the proper basis for war between nations until or unless the nation itself makes war upon another nation. Or to put it another way, the only war I'll grant as justified is a defensive war against an invading nation. There are far better ways to interact with other nations over almost any level of disagreement than war.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You've read far too much into one little comment. It's not about being the ENTIRE reason. The guy was asked why these people are angry at the USA and there is one of the reasons.
The real reason that counter-terrorism is in shambles is because we don't actually have Jack Bauer working for us...
Saddam Hussein was exporting oil before we invaded in 2003.
Googling "Iraq oil Bourse" the first hit is this page.
I quote:
It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam’s long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintaining the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.
You see, Iraq had decided to sell their oil for Euros, not US Dollars. If this continued, and other oil-producing nations followed suit, it would have been very bad for the US economy.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Keep on being a prick, and keep wondering why people are pissed at the US....
I'm pissed off at the world and I don't care.
People will be pissed off at the US no matter what we do. The thing to do is finish the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and pretty much quit all these trading and military alliances, and let the world go fuck itself.
No more NATO, no more US bases in Europe or Korea or Japan or the mideast. No more trade with Asia. Fuck all of them.
I just don't care. I don't want a big military budget any more, just 100,000 nuclear weapons, for if anyone attacks us, and a little budget. I hear about accepting the world, and I see no reason to have to do so.
The opinions of the world is not worth it.
This is my sig.
I thought it was either because we skipped one season and got stuck with a mini movie,
or that CTU had been decommissioned and Jack Bauer was nowhere to be found?
This person is correct. The source of the Wahhabi extremist religious fanatics is Saudi Arabia, who continue to export their anti-American screed (and I mean that literally) worldwide thru madrassas, with the help of factions in Yemen.
The vast and overwhelming supply of money and volunteers for al-Qaeda is from ... 95 percent or more ... Saudi Arabia.
Attacking Afghanistan is a waste of time - it was a forward base, and they're not there anymore.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, the FISA requires they get a warrant within 72 hours if they want to keep the intercepted data - it does nothing to prevent gathering it in advance of getting a warrant.
There ARE Directives which govern the activities & practices of SIGINT organizations (see James Bamford's books Body Of Secrets or The Puzzle Palace for details about USSIDs) but those also limit what you can keep and not what you can gather.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, the FISA requires they get a warrant within 72 hours if they want to keep the intercepted data - it does nothing to prevent gathering it in advance of getting a warrant.
Yeah they can get the warrant later, but without that warrant to retro-actively make the search legal, it is retro-actively illegal. So it's still warrant protection. Certainly it pushes the boundaries of the 4th Amendment and I can't say I really like it, but I can kinda see the need and it's way better than the completely warrantless searches that the NSA was performing. I mean damn, if you can't even get a warrant 3 days after the fact from a court that is widely known for rubber stamping every request put in front of them, then that's some damn lousy (and illegal) searching your doing.
The enemies of Democracy are