U.S. Intelligence: An Oxymoron?

This past week, the always keen Michael Tanji wrote in The Weekly Standard about America's degraded intelligence apparatus. He makes numerous good points about how the lack of manpower has affected our ability to snoop. Pay and benefits are driving senior employees to contract work, and the NSA is suffering a power and equipment shortage. Apparently, since they started mining data from U.S. citizens, they're too underpowered and preoccupied to gather data on all that other stuff, such as North Korea (now nuclear,) Iran (soon-to-be-nuclear,) and Russia, whose intelligence is reportedly back up to Cold-War levels. Yikes!

Well, here's a start: first, stop forcing the NSA to go through the Pentagon for permission to do everything, ranging from listening in on al-Qaeda to ordering a box of Sharpies. Second, stop spying on your own citizens. If you really need to do it, let the special court know about it first. Third, stop giving the world the finger, since a stupid foreign policy can only get in the way of our snoops and clandestine agents. After all, we Americans are not the only people in the world who depend on a strong, competent, and professional spy apparatus.