You do know that Obama made specific promises to _not_ make/sustain these kinds of programs? At least for me, that is a huge concern.
Candidate Obama used it as a differentiator of himself. Here is a video of him in 2007 talking about how the tapping of US Citizens is bad and about the preservation of constitutional rights to privacy.
The impresion I have is that Obama "was convinced" to go along with these programs after elected. He might have truly believed the system was not abusive, or if he didn't he would be risking creating enemies inside his government, or both. The problem is, no matter how much non-abusive such a system might be today/yesterday, it will/would derail into abuse in the future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years time, who knows). There's no way people with this kind of power would always "be responsible".
Yeah, I'm with you on this phree. Obama actively campaigned to protect our civil liberties and once in office completely ignored them. He's a liar. Wolf in sheep's clothing.
He also promised to stop these "Wars of agression", and apparently that meant just being more quiet it about it and attacking Pakistan with drones. I do get what you are saying. But no offense, surprise surprise a candidate from one of the two major parties said something on the campaign trail that he didn't follow through with once in office. Color me surprised. :) My only point was he didn't start these programs, and even if he did want to stop them good luck putting the kaibosh on numerous programs numbering in the billions of dollars. Pulling the plug would be tough, and be met with lots of push back.
They do. And the Clinton cruise missile strikes. People hailed Clintor for not going to war, but he launched hundreds of cruise missiles into Iraq during his presidency.Do the Pakistan drone strikes remind you at all of the Cambodia bombings?
You should check out mk's post. It seems to me that the "boiling frog" anecdote is perfect for where we find ourselves. The water is getting pretty damn warm.