Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

[EX Q]: Is it not time to dismantle the CIA? It's not as if we weren't warned about the CIA . Some 50 years before the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its 500-page report on torture, former President Harry Truman published an opinion piece in the Washington Post asserting that the CIA was out of control and calling for it to be broken up . Truman's column appeared on December 22, 1963, a month to the day following US President John F Kennedy's assassination and 11 years after he himself moved out of the White House . Truman argued, as the president who authorised its establishment in 1947, that the CIA had strayed from the mission he had intended for it . He had favoured creation of the CIA so that a president would have one agency providing him with objective foreign intelligence, rather than having to rely upon the often conflicting information being served up by the Departments of State, Defense, and others who "slanted to conform to established positions of a given department" . Viewing intelligence gathering as its sole mission, Truman was disturbed "by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment . It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government." He said he had "never had any thought" that the CIA would involve itself in "cloak and dagger operations" . But it had which "has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas" . It is clearly of some significance that Truman published his piece just one month after Kennedy's assassination . Although there is no evidence that Truman was suggesting CIA involvement in the assassination , it is impossible to believe that the late president's difficulties with the CIA were far from Truman's mind . As a former president who the Kennedy White House regularly briefed on foreign policy issues and decisions, Truman knew how the CIA essentially steamrolled Kennedy into the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (and other anti- Castro actions), leading Kennedy to tell a friend that he wanted"to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" . Kennedy never had the chance to follow up on that idea but it was essentially what Truman suggested a month after Kennedy's death . Obviously, Truman's recommendation had no effect . In fact ,  the Washington establishment apparently took action to see that Truman's piece disappeared almost without a trace (easier in those pre-internet days) . According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, the Washington Post only published the piece in its morning edition, pulling it from view after that (a peculiar way to treat an opinion piece by a former president, especially on such a weighty issue) . McGovern also reports that former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs debacle, actually flew down to Truman's home in Independence, Missouri to get the former president to retract . Although Dulles reported back to his friends that Truman had indeed recanted , he clearly never did . In fact ,  six months after publishing the column in the Post, Truman wrote to the managing editor of Look Magazine that he intended the CIA as an intelligence gathering agency only and not a place where"strange activities" would be launched . No doubt, the Bay of Pigs and Cuba, in general, were not the only examples of CIA interventions that disturbed Truman . In the years between the end of Truman's administration and his Washington Post column, the CIA had orchestrated the overthrow of governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964) . Within a year following Truman's death, the CIA successfully brought down the Allende government in Chile (1973) . As for its activities since, its intelligence activities have clearly continued to be a low priority (it has gotten Iraq wrong from the start, culminating most recently in its failure to predict the rise of ISIL) while , what Truman called its "cloak and dagger" operations, have proliferated . According to historian William Blum, writing in Foreign Policy Journal, in the last 69 years, the CIA has (often in conjunction with the military) "(1) attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected, (2) attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries, (3) grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, (4) dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries, (5) attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders." And now there are the horrific reports of torture and, equally appalling, the defense of CIA torture by former CIA driectors, other top CIA officials and, most enthusiastically, former Vice President Dick Cheney who famously told NBC five days after 9/11 that it was now time for US intelligence agencies to operate on the "dark side" . That is the context of the torture debate . As Truman understood, the CIA was dangerous and should be broken up or, in Kennedy's words, "splinter[ed] into a thousand pieces and scatter[ed] to the winds" . That was 50 years and nine presidents ago and since John F Kennedy, no president has challenged the CIA . Perhaps each of them have understood there are battles that not even a president could win .
[EX A]: Some 50 years before the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its 500-page report on torture, former President Harry Truman published an opinion piece in the Washington Post asserting that the CIA was out of control and calling for it to be broken up

[EX Q]: I was radicalised by a neo-Nazi group. It could just have easily been Isis. It wasn't long after my 13th birthday that I descended into a spiral of heavy drug and alcohol abuse . It wasn't long after the abuse began that I met Mal, aged 29 . It wasn't that I hadn't learned my wrongs from rights, more that they didn't matter to the group of kids I then found myself around . Grades or sporting prowess accounted for nothing . Instead ,  accomplishment was measured by something that might actually be achievable: criminal records and the ability to tolerate copious amounts of drugs . Brownie points were awarded for any period of incarceration, be it in a prison cell or psychiatric facility . Mal's age alone was enough to earn him a significant amount of street cred in our misfit group of teenage boys , yet it was his history of extreme violence that ensured his approval rating was sky high . He was not just an incredibly violent man, but apparently belonged to a group of them . This made him even more attractive . Mal was a member of a then-notorious neo-Nazi organisation with a track record of serious criminal activity . He regularly turned up at whatever suburban park or abandoned house we found ourselves in as we sought to consume drugs and booze away from prying eyes . I didn't find it at all odd that a man pushing 30 was interested in hanging out with a bunch of delinquent teens . The more drunk we became, the more compelling his violent stories seemed . One night Mal invited me to tag along to one of the group's semi-regular gatherings . As I listened to one of the speakers rally his audience against the "foreign invaders" , I was immediately hooked . It was not I that had problems, I was told, it was people of another skin colour . The confusion that had been my constant companion, now viewed through this extremist lens, had suddenly become both figuratively and literally black and white . No longer was I to blame for anything . I didn't need to look at my part in my own downward spiral, as teachers, family members and police kept telling me . All life's troubles, it seemed, were the doing of non-whites . It was a relief to no longer feel responsible for my own - and others' - suffering, but better than that, I was now being called upon to be a vital part of "the solution" . It is, I imagine, the same sentiment a potential jihadist feels when he or she foolishly believes that they're being righteously called upon to fight for the creation of an Islamic state , as if that might fix what are largely personal troubles . I became part of a group that would drive around in the leader's ageing hatchback, plastering racist posters on walls and telegraph poles calling for action against the "Asian invasion" . Too dysfunctional to stage any coordinated sort of attack, our race war consisted of nothing more than starting fights with non-whites who were minding their own business . Since we were always heavily intoxicated, more often than not our victims survived the attacks in far better shape than we did . Unlike today , when a disenfranchised youth has a raft of violent ideologies to be swept up in , it was then my pure fortune that my only real option for extremist activity was this poorly led group . Ongoing action by Asio and the now-defunct special branch of the NSW police and, mostly, the self-implosion of key individuals in the group, meant that by the time I joined it was only a shadow of its former strength . Thanks to strong family support together with professional help, I was able to leave the group and its racist ideology well behind . I was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following a case of long-term bullying at school . While that has helped me understand what drove me to this group , it is clear that all the factors that leave a young person susceptible to extremist ideology- poverty, lack of education, inadequate mental health support services and general social exclusion - still widely exist across western nations . I cringe when I hear our political leadership deliver yet another speech extolling a commitment to fighting extremism, yet in almost the time it takes to draw their next breath, go on to announce cuts to community services groups, the kind of organisations whose roles are vital in addressing the risk factors that leave one vulnerable to extremism . It's not that Orwell was completely off the mark when he said"people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf" . It is just that by the time the men with guns are needed, the radicalisation process has already happened . This is a process that cannot be stopped by sending troops to regions where most locals couldn't even spell "Australia", let alone have the capacity or even the desire to attack us . The clear and present danger today, as events from Oklahoma City through most recently to Paris have shown, is that the biggest threats are of the home-grown variety . The real frontline in the war on terror is to be found in our education and mental health services . Until such institutions are resourced as freely as our military is , then extremists will be here to stay .
[EX A]: Brownie points were awarded for any period of incarceration, be it in a prison cell or psychiatric facility Ongoing action by Asio and the now-defunct special branch of the NSW police and, mostly, the self-implosion of key individuals in the group, meant that by the time I joined it was only a shadow of its former strength

[EX Q]: Power without purpose: the tragic rule of David Cameron. When the history of David Cameron's time as prime minister is written , no doctrine will be named after him . The government has been ideological, but not in a way that bears an intellectual imprint of the Conservative leader . There have been upheavals in schools, the health service and the benefits system , but those revolutions belong to Michael Gove, Andrew Lansley and Iain Duncan Smith . Cameron gave permission , he never pioneered . Cameron has also said he abhors "isms" and wouldn't want posterity to anoint him with one . Friends say this makes him a practical conservative of the old school , guided by ancient and uncodified British instincts of decency . His enemies think that is a posh way of saying he lacks principle . With no pattern of belief associated with his name, Cameron's legacy will be a collection of tactical manoeuvres, with as many prominent surrenders as victories . The true spirit of "Cameronism" in education, for example, is better conveyed in the removal in 2014 of Gove to placate the teaching profession than in his appointment to shake up the department in the first place . But in no field is the Tory leader's trademark better defined than in his approach to Europe . If any political manoeuvre deserves to be named after the Conservative leader , it is the habit of trying to sate the appetites of hardline Eurosceptics with morsels that would always leave them hungry . It might be called the "Cameron concession" . Thus has he fed the Eurosceptic pack enough to keep it snapping at his heels and frustrated it enough that his voice was drowned by angry barking . Perhaps the saddest aspect of this spectacle is that it saw a potentially sound policy trampled in the melee . The outline of Cameron's position is that Britain should stay in the EU but under changed terms . They will change anyway because the priority for most other member states is bolstering the single currency . This involves the integration of a euro-core with serious implications for Britain's status one way or another . So the principle of pro- active renegotiation, ratified by referendum, is sound . But Cameron spoiled a plausible position with cowardice : he set his renegotiation up as an empty vessel into which hardliners poured Ukip-ish fantasies of ending immigration . He bought the argument that says the terms on offer from Brussels get better the closer Britain gets to the exit , although that logic is commonly advanced by people who want the negotiations to fail . The deadline for his referendum, the end of 2017, was plucked from thin air without regard for what was diplomatically feasible or economically wise . But the chief reason Cameron's EU policy hasn't worked for him is that voters also consider motive when awarding merit . Those who want a referendum in order to leave the EU mistrust the prime minister because he wants a different outcome ; and pro-Europeans don't trust Cameron to defend Britain's interests in Europe because the whole policy came about as a sop to the sceptics . That doesn't leave many people who think the Tories have the right policy for the right reason . Europe exemplifies the problem , but it runs deeper . Cameron's team are sure they are running on an admirable record: economic growth, rising employment, lower crime, a reduced deficit and reformed welfare . These are things, like the EU referendum, that should make the Tories popular . By the same calculation, Labour, lacking those credentials, should be out of the running . Yet the campaign has started and Ed Miliband is still ahead . Downing Street clings to the now familiar explanation that voters haven't properly engaged with the choice, and that the Tory surge will come at the eleventh hour when the reality of a possible Miliband regime penetrates the national consciousness . But what if Cameron has hit the limit of credit available for five years in charge because even the good bits don't connect in people's minds with decent motives? That is what Labour strategists are banking on . Miliband's personal ratings are bleak, except on measures of decency and empathy . So those are the leadership qualities his campaign aims to project . The contrast they want to draw is between Cameron's ethical plasticity and a challenger who sticks to his beliefs . Miliband will be cast as a man guided by what David Axelrod, Barack Obama's former aide now advising Labour, calls"a north star" - a compass point that tells voters a leader is propelled by something more noble than the salvation of his own skin . Waverers who don't warm to Miliband(and who aren't irredeemably riddled with anti-Westminster rage) might still be persuaded that he is in politics for the right reason . The opposite is true of Cameron . Even those in his own party who like the direction of policy cannot sincerely claim that their leader is driven by much beyond a sense of entitlement to the job . That was less of an impediment in the past . For much of the 20th century, Britain was ruled by Conservatives who thought of political theory as something suspect or vulgar, a folly for continentals and socialists, and no substitute for the innate good sense drilled into English boys at the best schools . The Thatcher revolution disrupted the patrician culture in the Conservative party, but not the underlying belief that Tory rule is a default setting for British politics; the norm to which the country tends . That assumption, more than economic growth, deficit reduction, an EU referendum or any other part of the prospectus, is what makes Cameron think he can stay on after May . It is the confidence that he is an archetypal prime minister and the only credible candidate for the job . Perhaps he will be proved right . He will have money and much of the press to amplify that view . But even loyal Conservatives can't entirely ignore the intellectual void at the centre . The right has decried it as often as the left . The past five years have posed huge challenges for Britain regarding the economy, our place in Europe, England's relations with Scotland, the decline of trust in institutions . But of which encounter with a great problem can it be said the prime minister truly rose to the occasion? Cameron doesn't have big answers , he shrinks questions . And that is how history will remember him, whatever happens in May . He successfully pursued power and spent it without purpose .
[EX A]:
the history of David Cameron's time as prime minister is written The government has been ideological, but not in a way that bears an intellectual imprint of the Conservative leader