Posted on 09/29/2014 8:51:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This might be another stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moment. The intelligence failure in underassessing the threat posed by the DAISH (I prefer the Arabic acronym) might well be due to Clapper, who seems to be the champion of the NSA using its resources to make war on the citizenry of the United States, rather than directing its effort overseas as its mission as our foreign signals-intelligence arm would dictate. (Yes, make war — the conduct of signals-intelligence is a war measure, that it why the NSA’s program is so offensive, and would remain offensive even if there were a non-human algorithmic filter constructed by serious civil libertarians built into the system to prevent “abuse”.)
Maybe if the NSA had been attending to what was going on in the Middle East, rather than using it resources to analyse all our cell-phone calls (oh, it’s just “metadata” and “business records”) they might have noticed that the DAISH wasn’t Al Qaeda’s “jayvee” squad.
I don’t know how we’re going to survive two more years of this POS usurper and saboteur. He hasn’t even acknowledged the terrorist murder in OK, but he’s right there with both feet in his mouth every time a thug gets killed by someone practicing self-defense. It’s unprecedented for a president to not acknowledge the terrorist murder of an American citizen on American soil, but this POS is not doing it.
Clearly, Clapper is as dumb as a dust mite, but, what kind of idiot is ObOzO to believe him.
Stupid and loyal elitists.
All easily manipulated girls....ALL of THEM!! There’s not a complete set in the bunch!
She would explode! Rage would have her eyes rolling like the wheels on a truck. Anger would have her foaming at the mouth like a rabid badger. Her knuckles would be raw from knocking the teeth out of those offering more destructive nonsense. Her brain would ache from the collective IQ in the room coming in below a mediocre golf score if she excludes her own.
I hope that you’re not suggesting that NSA was NOT attending to what is going on in the Middle East. I’ve been retired for some time now, but before I hung up my cans, I can tell you that the Agency has NOT turned its attention away from the Middle East.
That's why we send bombers and missles AT NIGHT against ISIS , and we destroy EMPTY offices and buildings, and break out windows
because according to the administration's ROE "we hit'em where they ain't", but we break a lot of windows,destroy furniture, and incinerate their cell phones.
To be effective , you hit their offices at 11:00AM while they are working, you hit their training schools, you take away their supply lines and ammo dumps, etc.,etc.
This war against terrorism is all theatre and looking good in the press saying that we are doing something; it is not designed to terminate ISIS or terrorism.
It is designed to fail .
Kabuki theater. That’s all it is. The gullible love it.
She had the same intel that Obama had.
No, but resources devoted to what I have just argued is a war measure against the citizenry of the United States might have been deployed instead against foreign targets.
Arabic linguists are not going to use their talents against US civilians. Doesn’t make sense.
No, but computing resources might be (have been) turned to expanded automated monitoring of Arabic and other Muslim-language chatter, rather than toward warrantless domestic surveillance, and money might have been spent hiring more Arabic linguists instead of building infrastructure for a panopticon state in Utah.
I see from other reports that the possibility I had allowed that Obama’s passing the blame was a stopped-clock-twice-a-day instance, was not, in fact the case, and that his intelligence briefings even late in his last term had included warnings about the DAISH (a.k.a. ISIL, ISIS or lately IS). While I’m happy that the use of NSA resources to monitor American citizens in violation of the plain meaning of the Constitution, if not of some twisted interpretation given by secret courts (what would the Founders thing of secret courts?), was not, in this instance, responsible for the imperilment of our material safety, I’m still not pleased with the conduct of signals intelligence against the American citizenry as a whole.
I spent 33 years with the Agency, almost all of it on the tip of the spear, 22 years overseas. In my job I would’ve seen intercepts between US persons. I never saw ONE. We were continually reminded of our responsibilities under the 4th Amendment; a violation could result in dismissal or prosecution. If it went on, it was pretty well hidden.
Unfortunately, between Snowden's revelations, and with the decay of the Zeitgeist into what I call "the Era of Bad Stewards", I'm not so confident that all those now in the NSA are serving as honorably as you did in your 33 years.
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