Does the MASSIVE 4 year surveillance with 0 results mean

[bpilgrim]

the terror threat has been greatly EXAGGERATED?

Happy Holidays Everyone :toast:

peace

[jeff30997]

1. Happy Holidays bpilgrim !

:toast: :party: :toast:

[FogerRox]

2. Merry Impeachmas

[jeff30997]

7. LOL!

[bpilgrim]

12. thank you jeff30997

:hi: :party: :beer:

peace

[GrpCaptMandrake]

3. Merry Christmas!

And the terror *is* very real. It's just that it's being perpetrated by anti-American Repiglicans!

[bpilgrim]

13. thank you GrpCaptMandrake

we are definitely on the same page :hi:

BTW: you were great in DrStrangelove :toast:

peace

[GrpCaptMandrake]

21. Absolutely!

And a hearty "poo-tee-weet" to you, Brother Billy Pilgrim!

:toast:

[CountAllVotes]

4. Exaggerated?

Yes more than EXAGGERATED.

IMPEACH NOW!

This lying killing war criminal must be fired by WE THE PEOPLE!

:kick:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. no, you need another choice....

DUH!

[bpilgrim]

14. added

good one :toast:

peace

[cloud_chaser1]

6. They forgot

to take the lens caps off their binoculars.

[skids]

8. Other: It means the surveillance wasn't for that.

It was for other purposes.

[teryang]

17. Right, it's for creating secret lists

Lists are what arbitrary and oppressive government is all about.

[bpilgrim]

20. after data mining EVERYTHING

:hi:

peace

[Kansas Wyatt]

22. Is the data mining that BushCo. did, related to all of the lost/stolen...

Personal information that has occurred over the last few years?

[bpilgrim]

23. good question

very well could be :shrug:

peace

[indepat]

9. Didn't DC say thousands of terraists have been caught by this spying?

:shrug:

[bpilgrim]

15. i haven't heard of any trials...

or are they quaint now, too?

:hi:

peace

[cmd]

10. It got results

and we'll be living with them for at least three more years.

[salinen]

11. Santa was in Austria the SAME DAY AS ATTA!

I'm gonna catch that rolley polley p.o.s. traitor when he comes down the chimney tonight.

[bpilgrim]

16. i KNEW it!

the 'WAR ON CHRISTMAS' was a ruse all along to distract us!

lol

peace

[Warpy]

18. It means you won't find any Islamic terrorists snooping

on the Quakers and the Raging Grannies.

This bunch is paranoid in all the wrong areas, just like the Nixon bunch before them, for the same reason, and featuring many of the same people.

[bpilgrim]

19. what makes you so sure they are just looking there?

i think they are looking everywhere...



which is counter productive if you think there is a real threat in a particular area since you wind up with mountains of data that overwhelm you.

imho, they know this isn't such a huge threat but they are using it as cover to grant them the power to look anywhere they want anytime they want.

the more chaos in the world, the more successful they will be, unless we can stop the madness.

:hi:

peace

[Silverhair]

24. We have no idea what the results were.

It is a characteristic of the NSA and other similar agencies that they don't talk, and especially they don't talk about their successes - or their failures. We simply don't know what the results have been.

[bpilgrim]

25. ah, the secret prisons & torture

guess no-one would want to bragg about that, eh?

don't forget Jose Padilla

peace

[Silverhair]

26. Maybe. My point is that we don't know.

Information gained by those means could have been (probably was) used for covert ops too, and those don't get talked about either.

This kind of thing is a basic question for democracies. How do you remain honorable and still fight and win against dishonorable people? If you always fight "by the rules" and your opponent gets to do anything he wants to, you give a huge advantage to the "bad guy". But if you throw the rule book away, then you descend to the level of the bad guy and what is the difference? Do you allow your rule book to become a suicide book, or is it that your are doomed either way? These are very interesting questions.

[bpilgrim]

27. We do know about José Padilla - why wasn't he kept out of the papers?

and this isn't a difficult question in my mind.

TORTURE

ILLEGAL COMBATANT'S

ILLEGAL WARS

and SPYING ON ALL Americans WITHOUT a warrant

are acts of DESPOTS not Americans.

This behavior is just like that of Imperial Japan during wwII & look how history and the world judged them.

and what we are fighting are a rag-tag bunch of individuals/terrorist NOT nation states (yet) and rises nowhere near the level of what you are trying to paint as to why we have to consider scrapping our civil liberties, it's simply a SCAM.

peace