Reading...

The Fairies That Set Our National Security Policy by Larry Beinhart:

Now we are told by General Hayden that every time someone tells the truth about an NSA operation, another fairy dies.

...

It's fair to call them fairies because no one says exactly who those people are who have died or offers facts about programs that have failed. If our leaders mean that a person has died because a secret has been compromised, they ought, at some point, to say so, to actually name the person and demonstrate the actual linkage. If they mean that one of the programs failed, someone ought to get specific and there too, demonstrate an actual linkage, a genuine cause and effect.

...

One of the founding ideas, one of the essential ideals of this country, is that if something is true, then there's nothing wrong with criticizing it, because the criticism can be refuted with facts. If something is a fairy tale, it ought to be criticized, because spending time and money on the basis of fairy stories is a waste. Sending people off to kill and be killed for a fairy story is a tragedy.

Ha! We'll all share a good chuckle recalling this crap when we're staring through the barbed wire at Guantanamo Bay.

Also, here's a great column by Molly Ivins about immig'ants and the war on terror, including this excellent point:

This is a war that is being fought with the wrong tools -- and, in Iraq, at the wrong time, in the wrong place and against the wrong enemy.

It never did call for tanks, jets or carriers -- just a combination of good detectives and good intelligence. In other words, smart, clever people with language skills. All of which we have fully available to us because of ... immigration.

The people driving the debate on this issue seem to make it all about Mexistanis. It's a big world out there.