Just a thought.  I wonder if we are heading for a major melt down in the intelligence community.  Are the forces aligning (international allies, privacy rights groups, libertarians, politicians with an anti-intelligence bias, those against big government, ACLU, even some within the Obama administration who dislike the US intelligence apparatus and national security system and a host of other potentially strange bedfellows) to create conditions that will lead to the neutering of our intelligence capabilities?  Will there be a new "Church commission?"  We are already seeing calls for breaking apart the NSA.  What will happen under the guise of "reforms" to the intelligence community?  Or will cooler heads prevail within the Administration and Congress to protect one of the absolute keys to our national security? We cannot forget that there are people out there what wish to do us harm.  We certainly should not be aiding and abetting them with a knee reaction to controversy.

And as an aside, I think I recall Snowden and Greenwald saying they did not intend to do any harm to the US and were only focusing on bringing attention to the needed debate on the privacy rights of Americans.  They have now gone way beyond their first self proclaimed "mandate" and appear to be on the verge of significantly damaging US national security if they have not done so already.

V/R
Dave

25 October 2013 Last updated at 07:09 EThttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24668286?print=true

EU says distrust of US on spying may harm terror fight

COMMENTS (294)

EU leaders meeting in Brussels say distrust of the US over spying could harm the fight against terrorism.

A statement agreed by the leaders says that "a lack of trust could prejudice" intelligence-gathering co-operation.

France and Germany are pushing for talks with the US to find a new "understanding" by the year's end.

A number of allegations against US intelligence agents have surfaced this week, including the bugging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.

In addition there have been claims that the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored millions of French telephone calls.

On Thursday, the UK's Guardian newspaper also reported that it had obtained a confidential memo from the NSA suggesting it had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders.

The latest revelations have been sourced to US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who fled the country earlier this year and is now in Russia.

They have overshadowed other issues at the EU summit in Brussels, including the Mediterranean migration problem, which frames the agenda of Friday's talks.

Italian authorities said they had intercepted some 800 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean as the EU leaders prepared to meet.

'Vital element'

The statement of heads of state or government, released on Friday, reflects the EU leaders' conclusions following their talks on Thursday.

It says the recent intelligence issues had raised "deep concerns" among European citizens.

The statement says the leaders "underlined the close relationship between Europe and the USA and the value of that partnership".

It continues: "[The leaders] stressed that intelligence-gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism."

And it went on: "A lack of trust could prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence-gathering."

Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo said: "The objective must remain the same - to fight against terrorism but also respect privacy.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24668286?print=true

In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path

Quote:

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” Mr. Obama said, “or else it will define us.”

I concur and that is why I argue it is wrong to define the struggle in terms of terrorism alone.  Our enemies are conducting the most comprehensive, holistic, and sophisticated form of warfare that is at once subversive, psychological, and political in nature with terrorism as one visible violent element.  We need to understand that our enemies are conducting unconventional warfare and we must develop and execute a strategy that will counter unconventional warfare.

V/R

Dave

May 27, 2013

In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path

By PETER BAKER

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/politics/in-terror-shift-obama-took-a-long-path.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON — The pivot in counterterrorism policy that President Obama announced last week was nearly two years in the making, but perhaps the most critical moment came last spring during a White House meeting as he talked about the future of the nation’s long-running terrorism war. Underlying the discussion was a simple fact: It was an election year. And Mr. Obama might lose.

For nearly four years, the president had waged a relentless war from the skies against Al Qaeda and its allies, and he trusted that he had found what he considered a reasonable balance even if his critics did not see it that way. But now, he told his aides, he wanted to institutionalize what in effect had been an ad hoc war, effectively shaping the parameters for years to come “whether he was re-elected or somebody else became president,” as one aide said.

Ultimately, he would decide to write a new playbook that would scale back the use of drones, target only those who really threatened the United States, eventually get the C.I.A.out of the targeted killing business and, more generally, begin moving the United States past the “perpetual war” it had waged since Sept. 11, 2001. Whether the policy shifts will actually accomplish that remains to be seen, given vague language and compromises forced by internal debate, but they represent an effort to set the rules even after he leaves office.

“We’ve got this technology, and we’re not going to be the only ones to use it,” said a senior White House official who, like others involved, declined to be identified talking about internal deliberations. “We have to set standards so it doesn’t get abused in the future.”

While part of the re-evaluation was aimed at the next president, it was also about Mr. Obama’s own legacy. What became an exercise lasting months, aides said, forced him to confront his deep conflicts as commander in chief: the Nobel Peace Prize winner with a “kill list,” the antiwar candidate turned war president, the avowed champion of transparency ordering operations over secret battlegrounds. He wanted to be known for healing the rift with the Muslim world, not raining down death from above.

Over the past year, aides said, Mr. Obama spent more time on the subject than on any other national security issue, including the civil war in Syria. The speech he would eventually deliver at the National Defense University became what one aide called “a window into the presidential mind” as Mr. Obama essentially thought out loud about the trade-offs he sees in confronting national security threats.

“Americans are deeply ambivalent about war,” the president said in his speech, and he seemed to be talking about himself as well. Mr. Obama said the seeming precision and remote nature of modern warfare can “lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism,” and it was not hard to imagine which president he had in mind.

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” Mr. Obama said, “or else it will define us.”

In a sense, that had already happened to Mr. Obama. Somehow he had gone from the candidate who criticized what he saw as President George W. Bush’s excesses to the president who expanded the drone program his predecessor had left him. The killing he authorized in September 2011 of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen tied to terrorist attacks, brought home the disparity between how he had envisioned his presidency and what it had become. Suddenly, a liberal Democratic president was being criticized by his own political base for waging what some called an illegal war and asserting unchecked power.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/politics/in-terror-shift-obama-took-a-long-path.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&pagewanted=print