I really struggle with this FISA insanity. We are being handed to the wolves by sheep (sheep's of power) who think they are wolves. The inconspicuousness of the obvious is the path we are on—A police state sold as “protection and security”. The sheep who think they are wolves have no idea how stupid they are—we mustn't forget true wolves like Hoover or Dulles or the true disease of modern American ideology and the wolf pack leader Uncle Joe-McCarthy (McCarthy was able to use the domestic and foreign intelligence services to serve his witch hunt-inquisition and political purge by means similar to what FISA will now make law)

McCarthyism isn't understood, especially today with half a century behind us, but also because it isn't rational. It builds from a paranoid lunacy; That is its power, but equally its weakness because it leads to absurd conclusions. By creating an “ideological doctrine of a war on communism” it is possible to manipulate the entire structure of power to analyze an opponent built on an illusion of perception, namely it's evil, as opposed to analyzing this opponent's actual power. McCarthyism views “communism” as a false belief, in the sense of being heretical. The more pragmatic Western Europe was able to develop and create in a more thorough way a “communist compromise” than FDR's New Deal and thus achieve a position where government utilizes socialistic ideas that better “protect” their societies from some of life's brutal realities—namely it offers its people a greater range of basic fundamental rights and goods—like higher education at cost, universal health care at cost, a minimum existence level that offers all individuals certain guarantees, like a place to live, clothing, food, electricity to their home, house rent as long as it doesn't exceed a certain level and so on, or a minimum wage that is economically (scientifically) calculated so that minimum wage means that no matter what you do, you earn a paycheck that guarantees when the month is done you will on statistical grounds be able to pay for the average cost of living. Because of this Europeans have a “buffer” when an economical crunch hits because the ability for the entire society to maintain its economical stability via the engine of consumption remains high—the US was not able to consume its way out of the last economic crunch in the aftermath of 9/11 because households in the US suffer from negative savings while Europe on average maintains the Keynesian magic number of around 13%. Therefore these “communistic” goods “protect” their capitalist structure—while in the US the denial of these “communistic” goods means 47 million people fall outside of the envelope of “security”, and the social welfare system offered to Americans is the world's highest prison population; congress offers a minimum wage that is not grounded in economical reasoning but rather is more akin to the cartoon character Bullwinkle the moose when he exclaims, “Watch me pull a rabbit out of hat—Whoops wrong hat!” (One of the Bush methods to “increase wealth” was his idea of increasing the number of home owners—which has given us the subprime mortgage crisis)

So when it comes to FISA legislation the Congress has agreed to or is about to agree to expanding the powers of the intelligence agencies but without analyzing the mechanics of what has occurred. Prior to 9/11 intelligence agencies were in fact on the tail of a number of the 9/11 terrorists. What prevented them from catching them wasn't because they needed more extensive powers to spy on the American people but rather it was because their superiors located in Washington refused to give it a priority—in essence they aided and abetted the terrorists—much like the Iraq War has aided and abetted al-Qaeda by offering them entrance to a nation (Iraq) they previously were blocked from entering—as said the logic of McCarthyism leads to absurd reasoning). So the 9/11 commission ought not to have “centralized” the intelligence agencies and further weakened their intelligence capabilities but rather looked more closely into why these “superiors” were negligent. If anything is obvious in the US, it is that the intelligence agencies were compromised, not by “spies” from a foreign power, but by “spies” within the US political base itself—think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Kagan, Feith and so on. Thus in order to create the impression that Iraq was the greatest threat to nation and the world since the rise of Nazi Germany, the intelligence agencies offered up Intel that was picked to backup the already decided policy (the already decided policy was we are going to war against Iraq no matter what—because they have WMD, the are “evil, they threaten us, their neighbors and our allies, they cooperate with al-Qaeda, WE offer them need democracy, because they are bad to their own people and a few other things—most of which is out and out false, except for the fact that Saddam was indeed cruel to the people—so we apparently have desired to show that we can be even crueler—so as to win heart and minds—you get a heart and you soldier get the head). Thus the intelligence agencies did not offer unbiased analysis of Iraq's threat to us. The intelligence agencies, because they were compromised, offered a falsified picture of reality, “appeasing” the Bush administration and undermining the true purpose for their existence—unbiased information, especially in terms of threats to the nation. The credibility of the intelligence agencies was compromised not because they required more “freedoms” and enhanced privileges to spy on Americans but because the leadership of these intelligence agencies failed to offer unbiased intelligence to policy makers—the purpose of intelligence is to help shape and form policy and not to offer up bits of information that back up an already decided policy and suppress all intelligence that contradicts desired policy. The concrete answer to Saddam's WMD capabilities was, “We don't know”—That would have forced Bush to say “we doubt the validity of the intelligence agencies” but would have meant that had Bush attacked he would be forced from office because he attacked when advised to wait for the UN inspectors to obtain more solid Intel.

So if anything the power of the intelligence agencies ought to be restricted until the individuals responsible—those who allowed themselves to be compromised are weeded out and removed and replaced by people who have a higher sense of integrity and sense of purpose. What's worse is the creation of the new intelligence agency “Homeland Security” as well as the “The intelligence Czar”. Homeland Security is a false move and merely reveals an ignorance—in terms of security—the proof of this was New Orleans and hurricane Katrina—where FEMA previously an independent arm of security was moved under the head of Homeland security—ie Homeland Security is the consolidation a numerous agencies—forming a large bureaucratic slug.

The idea of an intelligence Czar merely reveals a greater politicization of intelligence (it admits it flat out that intelligence is “politic”, just like the “weather”, or “pollution and global warming” or law judges and political opposition (using wire tapping, and judges to instigate a witch hunt against political opposition (something which constitutes a threat to national security)—because the Czar will hear the president's desires immediately from the presidents mouth—your voice is my command sire and will then proceed directly to manipulate the entire system of intelligence from the top down. George Tenet's idea of “seamless” merely means “compromised” “Seamless” is good just so long as “intelligence” means “satisfying the political agenda” otherwise good intelligence comes from the independence of the agency from all politics—so that it can deliver information that might not be desired to be heard—hence to “inform” policy makers.