One point that I think is sometimes overlooked in this discussion is that the elected government in Iraq, UIA, is pretty much the dictionary definition of an Islamo-fascist government (it isn't really a party, since it is an alliance of the Badr brigade and Sadr's forces and SCIRI and others).

When I read the blogs of random people in Iraq (random educated people, probably), they describe how these groups have been killing professors at universities, and harrassing and attacking people on the streets whose dress is not sufficiently modest. They're almost certainly behind a large number of the sectarian killings. Much like the brown shirts in German in the 1930s, these groups represent people who've been locked out of the economy, in this case because there never was much of an economy beyond distributing oil revenues.

What Iraq needed, even before Saddam fell, was a real, educated, middle class, for it is the presence of a middle class, not democratic elections, that makes for a peaceful nation. You have to be, as Atlanta called itself in the 1970s, "too busy to hate."

At this point, it is pretty clear that even if the Shiite government manages to suppress the Sunni insurgency, that Iraq is no closer to being a beacon of light in the Middle East than it was under Saddam. Nothing we do militarily will change that, for real change requires education and an exported-oriented economy, neither one of which Islamicist governments are particularly known for.

If there's anything we're accomplishing by continuing to prop up this quasi-fascist government, I can't think of what it might be. It's time for us to leave Iraq.

Were I in charge of a post-9/11 data mining system, one thing I'd definitely incorporate would be all of the charge card, debit card, and bank transactions that I could get my hands on. Some of that information (charge card records, for example) is almost certainly unprotected against distribution (they seem to sell that data to everyone they can find). So, it would be interesting for someone to investigate whether these financial records are also fed into the data mining cruncher. I'd bet 100:1 that they are.

There are a # of interesting issues here.

First, are Americans really prepared for this level of intensive snooping on their behavior, with the government looking at all of their purchases, phone calls, emails, etc, and tieing all of that data together?

Second, who has access to this information? Can it, or portions of it, be distibuted to third parties? If you apply for a government job, or a Federal contract, does the fact that you get regular calls from MoveON's fund-raising people (and are thus probably a contributor), or the DSCC, or give money to the Democratic party, get noted?

Third, it seems likely that the # of false positives a system like this would give would be enormous, perhaps making it completely unusable. Imagine that Joe buys a bunch of fertilizer, while Fred buys more gasoline than the cars he owns would lead you to expect. And they both order Pizza from the same place, which happens to rent a truck periodically. Is this Oklahoma city redux, or just a coincidence? What if instead of Fred and Joe, the people are Ali and Mohammad?

Fourth, does any of this information get laundered and used in trials?

Fifth, can Karl Rove stop on by and get access to this information? What mechanisms prevent this from happening, given that the entire program has no oversight outside of the executive branch?

I think the Qwest CEO nailed it when he pointed out that the complete lack of legal process made cooperation impossible.

We have to face facts: there *is* no Democratic party any more. If that party can allow the President to label anyone in the world, including the US, as "unlawful enemy combatants" and hold them without habeas review for all eternity, while torturing them, and doesn't think such a bill is worthy of a filibuster, or even a speech condemning it, then it simply doesn't matter to the future of the Republic whether that party wins or loses.

This is a true disgrace, and tells us how utterly worthless our so called "leaders" are. The Republicans all sold out for access to power, and the Democrats sold out out of pure fear. Pardon me if I don't feel like thinking about which party has debased itself, and our nation, more.

I've never contributed to the Republican party or its candidates, but right now, I'm trying to imagine why I'd want to help the Democrats, either.