“....Knowing they’re lying doesn’t tell me the truth or give me the facts. Either I’m too paranoid and things aren’t going to where I think they’re going or I’m right and very confused about what can be done to stop it....”
Well, I should add some caveat. I covered the Pentagon and military services for years and by and large they are very trustworthy people who might decline to talk about certain things but, except for the occasional rare bad apple, almost never lie to anyone. The FBI is pretty good too. Many elements of Homeland Security (especially Coast Guard) are outstanding folks. Cheney is a really sharp guy, a straight shooter. I could name a few others...
But to your central point, I don’t know that “more knowledge” would make it better for you or any of us. I used to think that if everyone sat through three or four defense appropriation committee meetings run by Murtha (like I used to have to do) half the country would immediately take up arms and overthrow the whole bunch of them, at least the ones in Congress. And the bureaucrats in the domestic agencies—they are so disconnected from reality it’s like going to a Disney movie.
The one thing I can tell you for sure that is true is that we are now in a real war, and it’s a war for the future. It’s not something our government decided to contrive. It’s something the Islamists won’t give up on. So, whoever the president is, he or she has to be a hunter/killer somewhere in his or her heart and soul. The jihadists are not gonna go away, they are just gonna keep on coming. If our government fails at everything else, so be it. We the people will figure out how to fix it later. But if they fail in this war, there won’t be any “we the people” left to fix it.
“The one thing I can tell you for sure that is true is that we are now in a real war, and it’s a war for the future. It’s not something our government decided to contrive. It’s something the Islamists won’t give up on.”
I believe the biggest problem this country faces now is deluded citizens. American’s who are embracing socialism in ever increasing numbers. I can’t believe some of the junk that’s being talked about now on basic Constitutional rights. Particularly on the 1st and 2nd Amendments. The general insanity that’s passed off as truth or fact today that’s being swallowed whole. It’s these socialists that threaten me everyday, not some cloudy so-called terrorist threat. I think about the odds, there’s no comparison.
There are so many long time held beliefs and convictions I’ve started to question (not my conservative beliefs but rather the actions of our government). Terrorism is just one of them. This so-called War on Terrorism, well, if I look at it from the perspective of how it’s being fought it doesn’t look like much of a war to me. This WOT has also ushered in real serious privacy questions that at least from what I understand, could bring some really nasty abuses of power. Waco, and many other things, has shown me the government does not mind abusing its power at all or that they give a damn about individual lives.
“But to your central point, I don’t know that “more knowledge” would make it better for you or any of us.”
Whenever world events take place I always find myself asking “What’s really going on?” A case in point was the Chinese blasting one of their satellites into a billion pieces and one of their subs surfacing along side an US aircraft carrier which the US claimed they didn’t know it was there. Then I read an article here on FR that was I believe the first time I felt that I knew what was really going on with these 2 seemingly unrelated events. It was all about Taiwan and a newly elected President who wanted to claim independence from the Chinese. China used the above mentioned events to show the US to stay out of it, among other things. It was quite a nice experience to know what was happening and the reasons behind it.