I agree. Perhaps more importantly, I strongly suspect our leaders and intelligence folks also had other considerations they'd prefer to keep low key. That balloon potentially gave us an opportunity to learn a lot, first by watching it in operation, and secondly by getting their hands on the equipment itself to deconstruct and see what its capabilities are. [Plus, I've heard that steps were taken to screen and block access to any US 'secrets' it may have tried to get while it was flying through our airspace.]
Let's face it... All major world powers have surveillance programs of various types. I gotta believe there's much more to this issue than what our national security experts want to make public (in our national interest), and attempts to evaluate and judge "what should have been done" on simplistic terms are likely misguided, to say the least. |
