I read something disturbing in the paper a couple of days ago:
"The
top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one
knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs
exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."
As if we didn't already know that the government was unwieldy, now we have to read that no one has a clue as to how much, how many or what. Seriously?
It goes on to say that ~854,000 people hold "Top Secret" security clearance.
Let's do some very simple math here because I am, after all, a blonde ...
If we follow the logic of the old shampoo commercial where so-and-so tells two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on, even if only HALF of them succumbed to pillow talk, drunk talk, braggadocio/posturing, etc. because they are, after all, human even though they may work for "The Company", that means that there is the potential for 5 to 10 million people in very short order to know something that they probably shouldn't, and then pass it on innocuously or inadvertently (hopefully) to someone who just might be listening for something like that ... like maybe that Russian chick and her posse that was just deported for being a spy.
I know the world of espionage isn't nearly as interesting as something you might read about Jason Bourne's latest mission. I honestly haven't thought too much about our various "security" agencies and how they've protected us because "all sorts of bad things haven't happened so they must be doing a good job," right? Some days that makes as much sense to me as saying "think about all the lives my 80-year-old mother has saved today by NOT driving on the freeway."
The article goes on to talk about the fact that of the 50,000 intelligence reports that are produced each year, many are largely ignored ... because there are 50,000 of them produced each year! Who has time to read all that?
It further states that there are apparently only a handful of "super users" who are plugged in at a high enough level to be privy to the volume of information that is supposedly available, but they can't keep up with the volume! What, they can't read the 50,000 reports because they have a real job on their desks? I've heard that one before.
All I'm saying is, if we're going to toss around the phrase "too big to fail" and say BS to that when it comes to banking, oil companies and other things, we should probably apply it to this arena as well. We've certainly found out that things can become so big that they fail at the very thing they are trying to accomplish. They suffer from lack of interdepartmental and interagency communication, politics, budget battles, PR, etc., and then eventually end up as a headline and lose the faith of the very people that they are supposed to represent, look out for, work for, etc.
To those who spend their lives safeguarding our interests, I say a heartfelt "thank you." But I'm guessing you probably have the same issues as the rest of us when it comes to your wanker boss and the bureaucracy getting in the way of you doing your job.
read the complete article here:
And this growth came about after 9/11.
Hmmmm....who was the president then? Who got the Patriot Act passed?
Oh yeah, right.
And yet the teabaggers only started protesting "big government" AFTER January 20, 2009.
Thanks, Voice, but I kind of wish I had not read this. In my imagination, I have wondered over the years whether there was some hidden reason why crazy decisions were made by our government. But I concluded that my suppositions were crazy, surely not the government.
Oops, I think I was right the first time around. Our government, for all the good it does, is scary sometimes, and it's alarming me now.