Dec 28 2005
The Battle For America Has Begun
Surprisingly, the liberals want a fight for the future of America over the issue of national security. In their world there is no war, simply crimes to fight in court. In their world we cannot monitor communications from people who are willing to die to kill as many of us as possible. We must protect the terrorists’ rights to plan and execute deadly attacks once they have crossed our borders.
The left is West Wing, the rest of want something like 24. The liberals are for the Gorelick Wall that ensures we will not be able to stop a future 9-11 attack, since they are desperate to pretend 9-11 changed nothing.
The NY Times is crowing about the results of their leaking of classified material and the fact we now will fight the future in the courts.
Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The NY Times is expecting to put terrorists back on the street again. And they seem giddy about it:
The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises “fascinating and difficult questions,” said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied terrorism prosecutions.
“It seems to me that it would be relevant to a person’s case,” Professor Tobias said. “I would expect the government to say that it is highly sensitive material, but we have legal mechanisms to balance the national security needs with the rights of defendants. I think judges are very conscientious about trying to sort out these issues and balance civil liberties and national security.”
Yes, the idea is for the freeing of terrorists who have been caught red handed planning to kill Americans simply because the FISA Court could not accept their new, more limited role. FISA did not want to taint their process with NSA information. The prudes.
And the NY Times, like the rest of the liberal echo chamber, seem to not have sufficient intellectual horse power to discern between monitoring terrorist communications and monitoring anyone and everyone willy-nilly. They fear they are important enough to be monitored by Bush. Or maybe their plan is to try and be as much of a risk to our national security as terrorists so Bush will be goaded into partisan dirty tricks. They could be immature enough to believe partisan dirty tricks and illegally impacting on-going efforts to stop terrorist attacks will win them more votes next year? Apparently so.
He added: “The president believes that he has the authority – and he does – under the Constitution to do this limited program. The Congress has been briefed. It is fully in line with the Constitution and also protecting American civil liberties.”
…
While some civil rights advocates, legal experts and members of Congress have said that President Bush did not have the authority to order eavesdropping by the security agency without warrants, the White House and the Justice Department continued on Tuesday to defend the legality and propriety of the program.
Oh, those poor terrorists and their civil rights. They have such respect for rights and humanity themselves how could anyone even think of trying to listen in on their plans to kill people. Their actions and intentions are irrelevant – they need protection from the bullies in the Bush administration and the left will provide that protection.
Government officials, in defending the value of the security agency’s surveillance program, have said in interviews that it played a critical part in at least two cases that led to the convictions of Qaeda associates, Iyman Faris of Ohio, who admitted taking part in a failed plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge, and Mohammed Junaid Babar of Queens, who was implicated in a failed plot to use fertilizer bombs against British targets.
David B. Smith, a lawyer for Mr. Faris, said he planned to file a motion in part to determine whether information about the surveillance program should have been turned over in the criminal case. Lawyers said they were also considering a civil case against the president, saying that Mr. Faris was the target of an illegal wiretap ordered by Mr. Bush. A lawyer for Mr. Babar declined to comment.
Many on the left are calling for impeachment proceedings. I gleefully answer bring it on.
The madness gripping the left has affected Senators and Judges, as well ‘legal scholars’ (check first update).
The left has chosen which side they are on. They are squarely with the terrorists and against our government trying to stop the terrorists. They are so obsessed with getting Bush they obviously have decided a few thousand dead Americans is the price we all must pay.
Personally, anyone who plans to kill innocent people is the one who must and will pay the price for their murderous ways. As will the enablers and protectors of these killers who allow the attacks to go forward for something as pathetic as political gotcha.
Bring on the court cases! Bring on Impeachment. Let’s get this over with!
UPDATE:
And the centrist democrats are going to be running away from the rabid left….
Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration’s eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party’s credibility on national security.
That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of innocent Americans.
“I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you’ve gone too far if you leave that impression. I don’t believe that’s true,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.
“I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it,” said Mr. O’Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is “good legislation.”
These Democrats say attacks on anti-terrorist intelligence programs will deepen mistrust of their ability to protect the nation’s security, a weakness that led in part to the defeat of Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, last year.
“The Republicans still hold the advantage on every national-security issue we tested,” said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, who co-authored a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) memo on the party’s national-security weaknesses.
Nervousness among Democrats intensified earlier this month after Democrats led a filibuster against the Patriot Act that threatened to block the measure, followed by a victory cry from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who declared at a party rally, “We killed the Patriot Act.”
After Mr. Bush sharply attacked Mr. Reid, saying lack of the Patriot Act “will leave us in a weaker position in the fight against brutal killers,” Senate Democrats dropped their filibuster and accepted a six-month extension. A Republican-backed five-week extension was adopted last week by the House and Senate.
Recent polls say 56 percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Bush is doing to protect the country from another terrorist attack.
…as the calls for impeachment because Bush dared to try and stop terrorist plans to attack:
The movement to impeach President Bush is gaining momentum, according to US Liberals Guide Deborah White. An early December Rasmussen Reports survey suggested about one-third of Americans would support impeachment, and that was before revelations of domestic wiretaps without warrant.
That Rasmussen Poll shows a 32-58 support for Bush. What we will see is that number drift to the hard core left and come in around 20-80 if the media pickes up the impeachment call.
According to this survey, most people want the NSA to do whatever it is they are doing. Bush may win the political debate, but the terrorists will be listening and adjusting their tactics if he has to explain what the NSA is doing.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/NSA.htm
National Security Agency
Survey of 1,000 Adults
December 26-27, 2005
Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?
Yes 64%
No 23%
RasmussenReports.com
Is President Bush the first President to authorize a program for intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?
Yes 26%
No 48%
RasmussenReports.com
December 28, 2005–Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree.
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Americans say they are following the NSA story somewhat or very closely.
Just 26% believe President Bush is the first to authorize a program like the one currently in the news. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he is not while 26% are not sure.
The Democrats who are leading the charge on this NSA issue are doing this against the interests of their own party.
The statistics show that it is not only Republicans who support the NSA, but Democrats, too.
I wonder why a Democrat would damage his own party?
This quote shows that politicians should not have been clueless about what was going on. In 2003, the DOJ told them.
I’m not afraid of the NSA. I think the NSA is trying to protect me. I am afraid of some of these politicians like Senator Reid who gloat about killing the Patriot Act. Reid claims to be protecting my rights. Actually, I think Bush is protecting my rights and Reid is protecting the terrorists’ freedom to kill us.
http://www.reportingwar.com/phares122005.shtml
SNIP
[T]estifying to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on October 30, 2003 on “Collecting Intelligence under the law,” former DOJ attorney John Yoo wrote:
“During wartime, the military engages in searches and surveillance without a warrant. We do not, for example, require the armed forces to seek a warrant when it conducts visual or electronic surveillance of enemy forces or of a battlefield, or when it searches buildings, houses, and vehicles for the enemy. Nor must military operations within the United States operate under a different rule.”
Walid Phares writes, ” I haven’t heard a critic asking who are we watching……I’d be more than interested in learning about “who the government has wire tapped and whose surveillance was not reviewed through the FISA process.” Only then can we see the big picture.” http://www.reportingwar.com/phares122005.shtml
Walid Phares is perhaps hinting that the American people would be pretty shocked to learn who is helping the terrorists.
DEMOCRAT INSURGENTS, DEAD-ENDERS, AND TERRORIST-EN
AJ Strata is ready to fight the “battle for America”
Surprisingly, the liberals want a fight for the future of America over the issue of national security. In their world there is no war, simply crimes to fight in court. In their world we cannot m…
Michell Malkins’ smack down on the Times is A MUST READ.
They mey be giddy, but could someone conduct an intervention and let them in on the joke they have become…
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin122805.php3
In June, Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of downed American Airlines Flight 77, blew the whistle on plans by civil liberties zealots to turn Ground Zero in New York into a Blame America monument. On July 29, the Times editorial page, stocked with liberals who snort and stamp whenever their patriotism is questioned, slammed Burlingame and her supporters at Take Back the Memorial as “un-American” — for exercising their free speech rights.
Yes, “un-American.” This from a newspaper that smeared female interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as “sex workers,” sympathetically portrayed military deserters as “un-volunteers,” apologized for terror suspects and illegal aliens at every turn, enabled the Bush Derangement Syndrome-driven crusade of the lying Joe Wilson, and recklessly endangered national security by publishing illegally obtained information about classified counterterrorism programs.
So, which side is The New York Times on? Let 2005 go down as the year the Gray Lady wrapped herself permanently in a White Flag.
The movement to impeach President Bush is gaining momentum, >/i>
god help these people…from a PR perspective (from which I come) these people are in so much trouble…even if they’re deranged call is gaining momentum…NOTE TO DEMS…GOPubs hAVE THE MAJORITY…ain’t gonna happen. Sheesh.
I so totally in awe at the massive f’up, previously known as the Democratic party…just stunning awe.
Comment–the complaint is that terrorist haven’t been caught. Maybe terrorism has been stopped, however.
http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/wiretaps_0.htm
SNIPS
Issue Date: December 26, 2005-January 1, 2006, Posted On: 12/27/2005
Wiretaps fail to make dent in terror war; al Qaeda used messengers
The Bush administration’s surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda.
U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers….
The sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration’s surveillance program do not require any court order….
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that the FBI has monitored and infiltrated a range of Muslim and Arab groups, including the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
But despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation, the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United States. Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.
In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=1449118
Dec. 28, 2005 — Lawyers for “dirty bomb” suspect Jose Padilla have filed a brief with the Supreme Court urging it to take Padilla’s case, linking it to the National Security Agency wiretapping controversy.
The brief, filed yesterday, uses strong language against the government for its treatment of Padilla, who was arrested as an “enemy combatant” in June 2002 and indicted by a federal grand jury last month.
“The government continues to defend this sweeping view of the president’s power to substitute military rule for the rule of law,” the brief states, “and seeks now to expand it further, arguing that the very authorities that it says justify the indefinite detention without charge of citizens also justify widespread spying on citizens without judiciary warrant or congressional notification.”
(see link for rest of article)
Damn this is a good post. So far, I haven’t run into one dud on the Council posts this week. I protest. One might as well stick a pin in the group and see who you get for first place…you guys are something!
~!D
What I like about this particular issue is that it’s blowback time on the NYT…or, as I like to call her, the Old Grey Whore. “Paper of record” my foot.
I wonder what is going on here. It seems like the government is taking terrorists off the street on non-terrorist charges so they don’t have to give up their intelligence evidence in court. What do you all think?
http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/wiretaps_0.htm
“[F]ederal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.
In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.”