>They certainly put up a good show of it, but then they need to be able to justify the spending somehow. Historically though they've sponsored magnitudes of difference more terrorism around the world than they've prevented.

Oh come now. Nobody actually thinks this is a war on terrorism - Terrorism is a tactic. That would be like waging a war on, say, artillery bombardment.

Make no mistake about it. This is a war on some non-state actors, and perhaps on some states. We may be a little bit unclear on who, exactly, those other states and other non-state actors are, but it's certainly not a war on a tactic.

A conspiracy is only as good as its theorists. To this point nobody has presented evidence of the government's "master plan". It looks to me like a lot of misguided policies and arrogance. I don't see anything more sinister than government power trips gone bad. Since we have no evidence otherwise, but plenty of evidence that fighting terrorism is the case, I am forced to conclude that fighting terrorism is their main goal.

The master plan has always been continued military spending to secure American financial interests (those of the elite and not of the people mind you) domestically and throughout the world even at the cost of local democracy and governance, as exemplified by numerous coup d'etats arranged by the US in countries with democratically elected governments. Security for the American people has never been the highest priority: http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-state-fears-its-own-peo...