> This statement was made pre-9/11 - an event that changed many things.

Bush surrounded himself with PNAC members before 9/11. All that 9/11 did was give them the opportunity to initiate regime change in Iraq, which they had been calling for ever since PNAC was first formed. Yet he promised "no nation building" while campaigning.

I don't see much difference between Bush and Obama's level of honesty.

Imagine a presidential candidate making promises and saying a lot of things that he believed in about spying and how the agencies involved should work. Then he gets into office and finds out that things are much worse than he could have possibly known before getting into office. Would you prefer he keep to the path he laid out in campaigning or deal with reality as it is, even if it goes against his beliefs? I try to be smarter today than I was yesterday, I hope somebody in such a position of power would do the same.

Note that I have no idea if this is anywhere near true and I don't believe in what Obama and the various agencies have done but I do believe something like this is closer to the truth than some grand scheme by Obama to lie himself into power.

Naivete is an arguable excuse for Obama's statements prior to his first election. But he continued his anti-surveillance rhetoric during his second campaign, and there is simply no explanation for that other than lying.

Did he? I can't remember that being an important issue at all in the 2012 election.

It wasn't at the forefront all that much, but he did say it and talked alot about how he was protecting our rights where Republicans weren't.

It would be too much to hope that he would make the public aware of why he decided to change his opinion, would it?

Government always thinks it knows better.