Interview Transcript
Question: How will this age be remembered?
Jim Woolsey: It will all hinge on what happens in the war. If the war is ultimately a disaster, not just a temporary disaster that it’s been here and there … But if it’s an ultimate disaster, that’ll be President Bush’s legacy. If we work around to defeating Al Qaeda and the remaining Sunnis in the insurgency, and hand over a structure in which maybe the Sunnis, and the Kurds, and the Shiites aren’t real happy together, but they have a constitutional structure and they’re distributing oil in some reasonably fair fashion – oil revenues – his legacy will look good because people will at the point emphasize other positive things. For example, his commitment to moving against AIDS in Africa. It’s really quite excellent. And there are things that he’s done like that that I think will get a hearing if the war also comes out halfway decently. If the war comes out in terms of total collapse, no one will remember any other good things that he did.
Recorded on: 7/2/07
Discuss
Jim Stiene on April 24, 2009, 7:07 PM
How will this age be remembered? As the last days of privacy probably.
Forget Iraq, todays young will not be able to break wind without you and a million marketers storing it in petrabytes somewhere.
What are the consequences? The young will feel like they are living in a high tech Soviet Union.
The only thing that could stop this is Congress, and something tells me we the people will lose in a fight with the geovernment and corporate America.
Unless you realize you are living in the same prison you’ve created.
we are on the verge of frightening times that ultimately those in power have to consider. It is a double edged sword you hold. Once the fishbowl is built, you have to live in it yourself.
Do you want your children looking over their shoulders? They are currently being bought and sold by medical and internet marketers. We all are. Data is cheap. Cookies are common. And no one in government or business seems to want to address the fact that they are drawing a net they are going to find themselves trapped beneath.
Their is national security, and then their is high tech Orwellian madness. We are quickly moving towards the latter. I’m not paranoid, I’m a programer. I am watching it happen.
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