Waste of Time?

Just a follow-up on an aspect of this NSA story that I've hit on a few times, but I think is getting lost in all the discussion about the legality and public opinion of all of this...

I wanted to remark how little I am convinced that this activity is even helpful at all (meaning not surveillance in general- which has been helpful- but this specific program). The problem pre-9/11 wasn't that we didn't have enough information; it was that we lacked the organization and tools to properly assess the information that we did have. The 9/11 Commission said as much too. It was a failure to connect the dots, not collect them.

And yet, following the attacks, President Bush's reaction was not to create a more responsive, competent government... rather, he decided what was required was Big Brother without limits and a dismissal of the laws and values born out of previous executive abuses.

Here's an example- The 2002 revelation that "Messages intercepted by U.S. intelligence may have warned of terror attacks a day before September 11, but they were not translated in time". This was not a failure of intelligence gathering, but a failure of a bureaucracy not set up properly to analyze what it had received. Had they translated it in time, they might have been able to connect that dot with other dots they already had (Al Qaeda planning hijackings, skyscrapers and sites in NYC and DC eyed, etc.) and notified all airports and airplane personel to add extra layers of security for the morning, among other things. That's just one example off the top of my head.

So what is the lesson that failure had for the NSA and the President? That they need to (for some reason) disregard FISA and spy on random Americans without any oversight in hopes of finding anything useful? Or was it simply that the government needs more Muslim translators? If you actually said the former, then congratulations, the President would like to nominate you to run the CIA.

Bottom line- It's simply illogical to believe that the NSA having secret access to the phone records of millions of Americans is the key to us defeating the Al Qaeda terror network. The fact that the people in the White House believe it is may explain why we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. They're not looking for him; they're simply waiting for him to call.

[PS- President Bush warns of the dangers this leak may cause.]