The buzz is all about NSA trying to catch overseas terrorists contacting their counterparts here in the US, and somehow the left has become more unhinged than I thought possible. The best example is Jonathan Alter’s fantasy piece in Newsweek (which begs the question of when did Newsweek start printing fiction?).

There are two bits of fact in this silly piece by Jonathan “Altered States”.

Fact One:

I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story.

Fact Two:

The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

That’s it folks. The rest is Jonathan’s liberal wet dream splashed all over Newsweek’s pages, as if it has any basis in reality. Just check out how giddy Altered Boy is with the little world he has created in his head:

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power

Apparently Altered Boy has been as desperate as Mary Mapes to find something to support his ego’s contention the world and country must be wrong – it is not Johnny Boy!

he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda

Altered Boy has some explaining on why all the leads we were getting will dry up now that everyone is aware that even a single phone call or email can be traced. That is because the 4-48 hour turn around for FISA review will not be the assumed limiting factor anymore. Until this story broke, most people would have assumed this was the time limit they would have before adjusting their communications paths. Not anymore. Now they have clear information on how their counter measures must perform to get around the NSA. Thanks NY Times. Hope your scoop was worth it.

But Altered Boy is not worried about that – he has something more!

His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations.

Again, pure fantasy on Altered Boy’s part. The terrorists need to communicate to coordinate. They need instantaneous communications provided by the internet, email and phones. They have and will develop tactics to exploit weaknesses in our defenses to use this electronic infrastructure safely. Including rotating through cell phones, multiple email addresses through multiple accounts and ISPs downloaded to a single PDA, and voice over IP. If you read what Boy Genius Johnny is talking about his example is limited to someone consistently using a phone or email account. He has no imagination. He probably is technically challenged to the point of being an idiot. Just like Mary Mapes cannot grasp why documents written in MS Word can never be confused with something written on a typewriter. Altered Boy has no concept of the methods and technologies that could be used to regularly change the topology of the communications paths between those terrorists who need to coordinate.

So, without the basic technical understanding, he dismisses the danger so he can wallow in his little fantasy:

But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

Altered Boy has found a hero! How quaint. Altered Boy finds taking down a Republican President is a much higher priority than stopping terrorists from killing people. I guess he feels ordinary Americans are expendable. Altered Boy then goes on a real tear of misunderstanding:

He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

What Johnny lacks in knowledge about communications he rivals with a lack of knowledge on the Constitution and the law. One of the best rebuttals to this silly rationalization is by at Powerline.

First, those who leap to the conclusion that the intercepts must be unconstitutional seem to assume that all searches require a warrant. That is not correct. The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. Warrantless searches are legal, and appropriately so, in a number of circumstances.

Second, the issue of speed is critical. When we capture a cell phone or laptop being used by a terrorist, it is usually because we captured or killed the terrorist. The amount of time we have to exploit the capture is very short. The terrorists will soon figure out that their confederate is out of business, and stop using his cell phone numbers and email addresses. So if we are to benefit from the capture, we must begin obtaining information right now. A delay of even a few days may render the information useless, as the terrorists will have realized that their colleague has been neutralized.

But Altered Boy is not concerned with the constitution, the law, terrorists or protecting Americans. His simple minded, near childish dismissal of these factors illustrate he is not focused on these trivial things. He has smote them down with a logic representing the IQ of a gnat. What he has in his little head is this:

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

Poor, poor Altered Boy. He has BDS bad – really bad. And Newsweek must have it bad also to print this prime example of why liberals are can never be entrusted with the security of this nation. This kind of rampant day dreaming is dangerous, and probably helped the 9-11 terrorists get through our defenses in the first place.

While all this is pathetically silly, I will challenge one thing Johnny said

We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Altered Boy should never equate Abraham Lincoln with a dictator. Is it possible Johnny is ignorant of history too?

But while Altered Boy is wallowing in a fit of fantasy, the Senate Democrats are doing something astounding – they are admitting they are against stopping terrorist plots in the US, if those plots can be executed fast enough and with the proper dynamic communications plan to foil FISA. And of course, now this is out in the open it is clearer and clearer what it will take to develop a scheme to foil FISA now that we have parameters on FISA’s ability to react. So what do the Democrats do now that this leak has exposed a weakness in our defenses and tipped off the terrorists?

I simply cannot fathom this response:

Some Democrats say they never approved a domestic wiretapping program, undermining suggestions by President Bush and his senior advisers that the plan was fully vetted in a series of congressional briefings. “I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities,” West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said in a handwritten letter to Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003. “As you know, I am neither a technician nor an attorney.”

Did Rockefeller just recluse himself on the grounds he is ignorant? Are democrats saying the people of this country fear their phone or email be monitored when they are being contacted by an Al Qaeda agent?

Let me ask that one again – do Democrats feel that Americans, many who would die for this country and to protect their families, cannot deal with their communications being monitored when Al Qaeda contacts them – probably unbeknownst to them!

There is more

Rockefeller is among a small group of congressional leaders who have received briefings on the administration’s four-year-old program to eavesdrop _ without warrants _ on international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to al-Qaida.

Actually, this is inaccurate (I know, it is the MSM so why do we expect some semblance of accuracy). Here is the scenarios which come to mind, which now the Democrats say we should not pursue:

(1) AQ terrorist books hotel reservations in a surveillance trip to the US to review targets. The US monitors the phone/emails coming from the terrorists to hotels being set up. But the Democrats and others like Alter Boy fear this is a fascist take over of the country and cry impeachment – why allowing this to happen

(2) AQ terrorists contact an unsuspecting US citizen who needs money and has a low moral threshold, and asks them to survey targets in return for wire transfers. The Altered-Democrats scream impeachment and would allow this to happen.

(3) AQ terrorists have infiltrated our borders for a distributed, timed attack involving geographically distributed cells. They need to check they are in position and have final details. The AQ mastermind coordinates from outside the country. The status check pre-go our a series of communications to the coordinator out of country – 60 minutes prior to the attack. The go signal will come then. Altered Democrats scream impeachment, and allow this to happen.

(4) AQ terrorist are executing a coordinated attack, but one cell is compromised. They need to activate the back up cell, so they contact the mastermind out of country, who in turn contacts the back up cell lead. He then contacts his team in order for them to run underground and get into position. The entire sequence from call for help to the disappearance of the back up cell members is 3 hours. Altered-Democrats scream impeachment and allow this to happen.

I can go on and on, but what is the point? We have to be right all the time and the terrorists need only be right once. And they are willing to die in waves trying to get that one time Hail Mary pass through. But the Altered Democrats are so paranoid they think the administration has nothing better to track down with limited resources than innocent Americans of the opposite political persuasion.

Funny thing is, the way the democrats are going the Republicans have nothing to fear. When paranoid fears of some mythical conspiracy are driving fantasies of impeachment and payback on the left, it is clear their attention is not on the emergency at hand: Al Qaeda.

Senators, of both parties, are demonstrating an unnerving lack of comprehension on this matter. They apparently do not understand the performance limits of FISA and how that can be exploited by an enemy far more imaginative than they appear to be. Altered Democrats and the MSM lackeys are illustrating our weaknesses quite well. But somehow I am not sure Americans who want their children safe are looking to impeach Bush at this moment.

Maybe Liberals should watch a little less West Wing and a little more 24!

Much, much more at Memeorandum

UPDATE:

Can you believe these lemmings on the left are calling for Impeachment? They must really want to take a drubbing in next year’s elections! Bring it on. Let’s impeach Bush for trying to track down possible terrorist sympathizers, or at least learn some of their planning. That’ll work.