I was thinking about this yesterday as I watch Dick Fucking Cheney talk about how they could have stopped 9/11 if they’d had the NSA system in place. WTF? What part of “Osama bin Laden plans to fly planes into buildings” didn’t you understand, you old whore?
Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, who serve on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called on Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, to clarify his statements that the surveillance programs disclosed through leaks over the past week have helped avert “dozens of terrorist attacks” in recent years.
Alexander testified yesterday that the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records was “critical in corroborating” information gleaned through the PRISM program, without providing further information.
“We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence. Gen. Alexander’s testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program helped thwart ‘dozens’ of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods. The public deserves a clear explanation,” Udall and Wyden said. “We look forward to reviewing the analysis that the general has promised to provide showing how the intelligence community arrived at these numbers. In our view, a key measure of the effectiveness of the bulk collection program will be whether it provided any intelligence that couldn’t be obtained through other methods.”
And fuck medical science for keeping THIS alive!
Bill Clinton agrees with John McCain, and seemingly Cheney, that the U.S. should get more involved militarily in the sectarian, proxy war in Syria. But why wouldn’t he bcause that’s Hillary’s position as well. Hillary has always been a neo-con. An interventionist warmonger. Maybe it’s because she like war? Or maybe it’s because as a woman she feels that she must appear as bloodthirsty as any man to be credible. Either way Hillary should never be our president. Cheney should never have been our president either.
The response that no doubt Gen. Alexander will give to Sens. Udall and Wyden is all too predictable.
He will say that he cannot provide any further insight into how he knows that spying on domestic phone calls and electronic message exchanges has averted dozens of terrorist plots, because if he revealed that then our enemies would know how we, uh, operate, and we could never foil any future plots – so he cannot comment on the matter further.
Except to clarify that actually domestic spying has averted HUNDREDS of terrorist plots, not dozens.
Wait – did I say hundreds of terrorist plots? I meant to say THOUSANDS of terrorist plots.
See how easy it is to run a totalitarian state?