...

4. Mentioned earlier... "Attack the NSA budget". This can be a win and a loose since a smaller budget could lower our countries defenses. It is possible that an attack on the budget would get them to lay off without any real action needing to be taken. This isn't truly an issue. The NSA had it's hey-day during the Cold War. Now that that's over, and the same level of effort can be attuned to fewer enemies, one would think that they don't NEED a bigger budget.

"Fewer" enemies? Yugoslavia is now split into at least 5 pieces. Before we only needed to monitor the line from Moscow to Tito. All the orders came down this line and Yugoslavia did what they were told, more or less. No one in the US had to seriously wonder about the differences between Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia etc... We didn't need to monitor the different governments in the different regions. The ex-SU is now split into too many pieces for me to count. Some of them have nuclear weapons that they don't want to turn over. Others have military ships. Before, it was enought to have a good presence in Moscow. Now you need to be in Kiev, Lvov, Talinn, etc... North Korea, the Mid East and Cuba are the only places that still need the same amount of attention that they needed during the Cold War. This is because they're already maxed out.

--Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin@eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+