[rhizome]

Black Hat Conference, a week and a half ago:

"Terrorists driven by a desire to 'create a caliphate' of sharia law in the middle east continued to plot attacks. 'Terrorists live among us,' he said"

GP conflates these statements to imply that those among us want to create Sharia or whatever among us, but Alexander did say the words.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-keith-alexa...

[jivatmanx]

Thanks Rhizome.

I'd like to add,

The Gulf States are already under Sharia, and have been since their founding almost a century ago. The Taliban copied Saudi Arabia, even using the exact same names for bureaucracies. [2] Relations with them were excellent before 9/11.

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_Promotion_of_....

But, as Iraq showed, there's no need to understand elementary facts about their culture before you invade and engage in a massive social engineering project, or engage in an global, eternal, "war on terror".

[rhizome]

there's no need to understand elementary facts about their culture before you invade

I can guarantee you that the people who directed the Iraq Wars knew full well the elementary facts about their culture before invading and engaging in a (partially) global war on terror. They know that you can't win a war against a technique, and they know that going to war in these areas attracts terrorists who want to fight against you. The only question was where the game board was going to be placed, and that question was answered over 20 years ago.

It was only in the portrayal to the taxpayer and the invaded that these were left as unknowns.

[knowaveragejoe]

Was that statement paired with a declaration of needing to "collect it all"? It seems more like we're stretching to fit a nefarious plot on top of what started as a largely benign effort and has since expanded into a system that has been abused in the past and could be abused to great effect in the future.

[rhizome]

Well, no, since the government has taken pains to say that they don't "collect it all." For instance, spam email. What they have done is say they need to collect what they think they need to collect. As the leaks have illustrated, this can indeed be expanded to "it all" if they want it.