FZR1KG wrote:he was politically quantum raped by the USA
![laugh roll:](./images/smilies/rolling.gif)
And the US didn't even need a Flux Capacitor charged at 1.21 Jigawatts!
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Yosh wrote:1. Other than the occasional headline, you won't hear about many successes in stopping terrorism, because the details will be classified.
Counterintuitive at first glance, but thinking it over it's unfortunately true, and let's not even talk about the partisan political spin.......
Yosh wrote:2. Not sure how we have a national dialogue on where the point of "pain" is on this. It was pointed out that the over-reach is real, in the here and now, while the threat of being involved in a terrorist act is incredibly small. Surely this is skewed someone (statistically speaking) by where one lives. NYC, LA, even Toronto, are more likely targets than bum-fuck North Dakota. Do we delete the existing programs, or least narrow them significantly, because we feel they are too intrusive? If there's another attack, how many of our countrymen/women will rationally say: "Well, that's the price we have to pay."
3. I don't intend this as an argument *for* the Patriot Act, but I note that "pre-Patriot Act," our intelligence procedures were considered inadequate by portions of the vox populi. Especially when the arm-chair generals effectively connected the dots *after* the Twin Towers attack and complained it should have been "obvious." So...for better and worse, the Patriot Act was inflicted upon us. This leads back to point #2.
Well THAT is the crux of the matter: Trying to be "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", while at the same time providing the level of security John Q. Public wants is at the very least...... messy.
Yosh wrote:4. Concern is well founded, the Church Committee in 1975 is an excellent case-in-point.
If you ask me, the US intelligence Community never managed to put behind the Bad Rep they got after the Church Committee droped that bomb on the US public. (And no, I am NOT saying that it wasn't justified). And in trying to do so all it got for its efforts was being accused of being unprepared for things like 9/11.
To use one of your evil imperialist gringo infidel (TM) expressions: "Everyone is a Quarterback on Monday Morning".