[dsuth]

1. I don't think the scope of these efforts are based solely around terrorist activity. They are very wide-ranging in scale, and seem to be a natural extension of the USA's foreign policy. In an ideal world it would be nice if neighbours didn't spy on each other, but in the real world, everybody spies.

2. Yes, clearly they do, and also alter the course of some very dangerous activities a la Stuxnet and Iran's nuclear program. Just because it's possible to circumvent these measures, doesn't mean they shouldn't be use either. Firstly, you've made it more difficult for terrorists and other parties to communicate effectively, which is already a win. Secondly, they will of course be updating their methods as well. I doubt very much that what we're seeing here is the be all / end all of NSA's capability. This is implied in the article, where the group hands down certain exploits / technologies for actual implementation, but tends to keep things back. A blow, to be sure, but I doubt we've seen it all yet.

3. ISIS are not the result of the Iraq war. It's very important to understand that ISIS are simply the most recent manifestation of a fundamentalist Islamic sect known as Wahhabism [1]. As convenient as it is to blame them on simple cause and effect, the reality is, as always, far more complex. Essentially this is a group of ultra-fundamentalist muslims, who have for a long time been part of Saudi's political structure. What we are seeing now is a return to their radical roots, backed by disenfranchised and poorly educated muslims across the Middle East. These are people who were left out of the massive oil money influx during Saddam's regime, and are now fighting tooth and nail against any and all transgressors - muslim and Westerners alike.

If anything this makes a case for the NSA's activities, not against it. It's not the US's meddling that caused these issues (although it certainly hasn't helped); these are deeply ingrained philosophies in Middle Eastern culture. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a very good understanding of their power structure and where they're putting out feelers, than not.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism...

[shit_parade]

>3. ISIS are not the result of the Iraq war

So killing hundreds of thousands of civilians had no effect whatsoever in allowing extremism and hatred of the US to thrive? How about our arming of the Syrian rebels, do you also believe our policy of handing out weapons like they're candy did nothing in assisting warmongers to engage in war?

I'm baffled by the naivete of your world view.

[dsuth]

No, I don't believe that handing weapons to people turns them into fundamentalist terrorists, and I don't believe the Iraq war created a group whose modus operandi has been the same since the 1800's.

Take a look at the article I linked above; this form of religious extremism has been a powerful ally to those seeking political power in the Middle East for a long time. Saudi Arabia was built on the back of Wahhabism, which it then tried to subvert into a conservative institution to ensure its rule.

In short, these guys like to play with fire to further their ambitions, and ISIS is the latest explosion. If you reduce ISIS to 'this happened because we did this', then you're missing a whole lot of narrative, not to mention understanding of the situation.

Why do you think they're so well-funded, and well-organised? This is not the result of a corrupt war that decimated Iraq's population, it's an ambitious power play that appears to be getting out of hand (again).

[Udik]

Religious extremism, and in fact extremists of all kinds, always exist everywhere. What the USA has done has been to topple organized states or regimes that were able to keep some order and rule of the law in their territories, fuel hatred and desperation by killing hundreds of thousands of people, bombing the cities and destroying any form of economy, also with the aid of a decade long and ferocious embargo (the estimates put to a million the victims of the embargo, mostly children), and finally providing weapons and training to "rebels" to produce internal revolts to weaken the "enemies". A myopic and downright evil strategy that is now fully showing its obvious results.

[cocoablazing]

The invasion may have not been sufficient cause to produce the IS, but it was necessary.