Still, it's quite important, politically; nobody believes anything he says anymore, and certainly not denial of spying or knowledge. However, in the political world, from sovereign leader to sovereign leader, you can't just *say* the other one is lying. At least not if you're allies, even if one of them isn't taking the whole ally thing too seriously.
Well said. There's a serious credibility gap that seems to grow every day.
Healthcare enrollment website has massive problems, well yeah, I'm sure the President knew as much from press reports as the rest of us. But I'm guessing that his subordinates at several levels down the chain were minimizing the problem so what at the level of the people directly responsible for working on the problem looked like a total nightmare was regarded with decreasing severity at each level up the chain. Like this:
webmasters: Website is fucked. Needs basic redesign that will take months to fix.
direct managers: Website has major problems. Some elements will need to be overhauled.
middle managers: Website has significantly underperformed. Some changes will be needed before it performs as expected.
Who hasn't seen pretty much this same scenario play out in their own organizations?
The problem I have with this scenario is that this is the president's baby. I don't see why he wouldn't demand regular progress reports and/or demos to people he trusted.
I've been involved in a few website roll-outs. I've mostly done UAT testing and bug hunting. Why wasn't the site sufficiently stress-tested? Why were their multiple companies being dealt with, rather than the government simply picking a Web designer and saying, "Build this site"? And how did it happen that they picked a vendor so shady that they would hide major problems with the website rather than saying, "Look, we need more time"? It's not as if Web projects always run on schedule. The website being delayed would be the most ordinary thing in the world.
It just seems to me like the administration left it up to HHS, and HHS didn't exercise any diligence at all - let alone due diligence.
Who the hell would want to spy on Obama? He isn't exactly hot grits...
I can't really imagine the NSA spying on him, but I could certainly imagine political enemies wanting to do it.
I can hardly believe that the President of the USofA will know all. Could be that it is in his line of command to know. But I would not be surprised if it was just a general 'we can spy on whomever we want' kind of thing.
I would hope that spying on another country's leader isn't something the U.S. would do as a matter of course - especially if that leader was an ally. How could something like that be done and the president not be told? It's an incredibly risky venture (as we can see now).
And spying on some Afghan village leader is just as bad in my book. Just because he is an Afghan does not mean he is a terrorist or has anything to do with terrorism.
Spying on an Afghan leader might be just as bad morally, but it has nothing like the same international diplomacy consequences.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
