How Do You Think We Catch the Bad Guys?

The NSA's spying and other tough methods are what have kept us safe after 9/11

Recent revelations about the actions of the Bush Administration in the war on terror have given it the image of a cross between Big Brother and Torquemada. Most recently comes the story of the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepting and monitoring communications from overseas to al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S. This followed reports of "black sites" in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, where high-level al-Qaeda operatives were kept incommunicado and under stress in conditions well below even Motel 6 standards. Which followed reports of various "coercive interrogation" techniques (most notoriously, water boarding, or mock drowning) used to get information out of the...

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