If Seymour Hersh's reporting can be believed, (see previous post), then all that money spent on our elaborate, all-knowing, all-seeing, and all hearing Surveillance State, AND all that money, time, and human treasure plowed into the Bush/Cheney Torture State - black sites, enhanced interrogation, Abu Graib, human degradation formalized as a policy - then well, it was all a waste of money, time and treasure. Wasted and worthless. Oh yeah, immoral and counter-productive too.
How did we find Bin Laden? It wasn't great intelligence gleaned from listening in to every cell phone conversation in the Universe, and it wasn't gleaned from torturing terrorist suspects, no, it was a "bounty," - a Pakistani intelligence officer, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and betrayed Bin Laden for a $25 million reward.
A bounty. Cold hard cash. Maybe more bounties and less surveillance, less torture, would be the smarter strategy? Cheaper, and less degrading for all?