It took a long time to get the president around to the admission, but after a week that included a federal judge reporting the NSA telephone metadata surveillance was “unconstitutional” and his own review panel reported that there was no proof the NSA had ever gotten any data from the program, President Obama finally got around to conceding the program “may be unnecessary.”
Getting that admission out of him isn’t the same thing as getting him to stop the program, however, as the best he would say was that it was possible that there were ways to alter the program, and that he was looking into the matter.
Indeed, the reluctant admission doesn’t read like one from the rest of President Obama’s comments, which remained on message about the notion that the NSA surveillance was totally legal and fine and that there would be some statement made on the possibility of reform next year, likely in January.
Obama went on to rail against Edward Snowden, whose leaks are the only reason the NSA abuse ever became public knowledge in the first place, insisting it was “damaging to the United States.”
Obama refused to address questions on amnesty for Snowden, insisting he was under indictment. That claim has yet to be verified, however, as no public indictment exists, and the Justice Department brushed questions about that, saying only to ask the White House.
Perhaps this time around Obama will be the man of his word, meaning that NSA will not spy on “usual-regular” working people not for know but for ever.
While 8.5 trillion dollars missing money in defense projects, while almost every USG department funds are misused and the result is for poor’s getting poorer, while the federal reserves do the usual business with USG, perhaps is time for USG using NSA, CIA, FBI and every other government agencies known to USG start looking into business deals that are suspicious, might have been suspicious from the time of Rumsfeld to Paul Wolfowitz to Paul Bremmer while in Iraq, the business relations of Bush family with Saudis Wahhabis and etc.
Not so fast……Will the real Obama please stand up.
A generally accepted assumption is that Obama (or any President) is in charge…he ain't…never has been…will leave office and nothing will have changed. He (they) are the public face of the lie the American people have been feasting on for many, many years. There are only hard choices left if the American people want to take the reins – perhaps for the first time since the Founders took us down this road.
Of course it will at be business as usual unless we get a president and a congress that represents the interests of the American and people and is committed to obeying the Constitution. Until that day comes, the USG is just a rogue political arm of the mafia.