Feb 08 2006
NSA Should Have Listened To This Guy
What would happen if the NSA was able to identify an American helping the bloody terrorist Zarqawi kill our soldiers? Would the Democrats and the ACLU call the effort to protect our young fighting men and women unconstitutional?
An American citizen held in Iraq since 2004 allegedly worked with terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and helped plan insurgent attacks on foreigners in Iraq, NBC News has learned.
The American, Shawqi Omar, who lived for years in Minnesota, Utah and North Carolina, allegedly met with al-Zarqawi on numerous occasions and is related to the al-Qaida leader, through marriage, new federal court documents reveal. Omar is also one of 12 people charged Oct. 17, 2004, with plotting a chemical attack in Jordan. The attack was prevented; Omar was arrested on Oct. 29 of that year.
Omar is a dual American-Jordanian citizen who was born in Kuwait. He came to the United States on a student visa in 1979 at age 17 and married an American woman with whom he had six children, according to court filings and interviews with relatives. Omar served 11 months in the Minnesota National Guard and became a U.S. citizen in 1986.
A traitor in contact with our enemy. Here is the perfect example of what we could defend against, if the Democrats would simply focus on winning the war and not the next election.
To question No. 2, the answer is Yes.
This is pretty cool. I’m the only guy here!
“…the Democrats would simply focus on winning the war and not the next election. ”
The Democrats would win the next election if they focused on winning the war.
The public should be aware of two important points about the Dubya’s domestic spying program: it’s illegal, and it’s not catching terrorists.
If the program were legal, there is no chance so many Republicans would be upset about it. While questioning Mr. Gonzales at Monday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, assailed both of the rationales used by the administration to justify the program.
Referring to the administration’s repeated insistence that the Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda gave the president the power to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Senator Graham said:
“I’ll be the first to say, when I voted for it, I never envisioned that I was giving to this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA carte blanche.”
Senator Graham then addressed the argument that the president has the inherent power under the Constitution to authorize the warrantless wiretapping. Such a view, said Senator Graham, would undermine the principle of checks and balances. “Taken to its logical conclusion,” he said, “it concerns me that it could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts.”
Rraham added, “And when the nation’s at war, I would argue, Mr. Attorney General, you need checks and balances more than ever.”
Apart from the legal issues, it’s increasingly clear that the president’s program is contributing little if anything to the effort to protect Americans from Qaeda-type terrorism.
Senator Biden asked Mr. Gonzales whether the program had achieved any results. Mr. Gonzales said it had helped identify “would-be terrorists here in the United States.”
“Have we arrested those people?” asked Mr. Biden. “Have we arrested the people we’ve identified as terrorists in the United States?”
The attorney general’s reply left people shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes. “When we can use our law enforcement tools to go after the bad guys,” he said, “we do that.”
Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.
Incompetent.