Bad Targeting

An Analysis to "Bad Targeting"

Many Americans are protesting that the current program of the National Security Agency to track and act on terrorism in the U.S. is going too far and spying on innocent civilians. The Washington Post article titled "Bad Targeting" is written by Jackson Diehl, who has been a writer and editor at the Post since 1978. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, Central Europe and the Middle East. Diehl defends the American protesters' positions by stating that the program, although necessary and well-intentioned, can easily get out of hand and violate the fundamental rights of Americans. Over 1,500 "suspicious incidents" were recently included in the CIFA-managed database. CIFA stands for the Counterintelligence Field Activity program set up by Pentagon intelligence to find reports on antiwar meetings and protests. Diehl makes a strong attempt at defending the protesters. While some of his reasons are irrelevant and insufficient, his evidence is strong making this a fairly good argument.

According to Diehl, CIFA was found last month to contain reports on at least four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, many of them on college campuses. One example is that those people who assembled for a Quaker meeting in Lake House, FL were considered a national security threat. This is a fair reason for supporting the claim, but there are no dates given to when this actually occurred forcing the reader to assume it happened within the last month or so. Another peace of weak evidence is stated when it says that ten peace activists who handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches outside Halliburton's headquarters in June 2004 were reported as a national security threat. While this evidence gives an exact date and incident, it seems outdated coming from 2004. Diehl mentions some other strong reasons and backs them with up with evidence. For example, Diehl mentions The Post's Walter Pincus and his aggressive reporting on the CIFA- managed database holding "suspicious incidents" in their computers for over the standard 90-day limit. This strong evidence gives good information on the issue and states a credible name and newspaper. Another strong reason is that many peaceful protesters were tagged as threats to U.S. defense facilities. The evidence is good showing that the Pentagon acknowledged its fault in tagging these protesters, but did little or nothing to clear their names out of the database. Congressional intelligence and armed service committees have yet to hold a hearing to review CIFA or its activities. The only real irrelevant reason in the argument is that CIFA is charged with working to prevent terrorist attacks, but instead

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