If We're Going To Be Less Safe, Let's at Least Be More Manipulated

The FBI admitted yesterday in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that it's further behind -- FURTHER BEHIND -- in translating "terrorism intelligence" than it was when 9/11 happened. Currently some 8,300 hours of untranslated "material," which might include a few hot plans in the old town tonight, is just sitting there. Plus the Bureau admitted that the long-promised overhaul of its computer system will not be completed until 2009 at the earliest.

Whatever else El Presidente has been doing in Iraq, fighting terrorism is demonstrably NOT at the top of the agenda.

Jon Stewart did a segment last night on "The Daily Show" about newspeak in the Bush administration ... their changing the rhetoric from "the global war on terror" to "the global struggle against extremism" ... based (the truth is bound to come out) on this article in Tuesday's NYTimes.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it .... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now." George Orwell, 1984