We Are At War People

Loading

I’m really amazed at the idiocy on the left. We are at war people! Do you think it’s just plain ole’ luck that we have not been attacked on our soil since 9/11? The real story about these wiretaps is the fact that the information about a highly classified program was leaked.

This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security,” he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House’s Roosevelt Room.

“This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States,” Bush said.

Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday’s New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency without obtaining warrants from a court violates civil liberties. One Democrat said in response to Bush’s remarks on the radio that Bush was acting more like a king than the elected president of a democracy.

Yes, there angry because he authorized wiretaps on those with specific links to terrorist groups outside the US. Are they angry that someone leaked information that has netted results?

A former Columbus truck driver linked to Al-Qaeda was nabbed as part of a secret operation that’s now out of the bag. The government spied on him and hundreds of other Americans without warrants.

It was a front page New York Times article that divulged for the first time that the National Security Agency spied on Americans, monitoring international phone calls and emails of hundreds of people including a Columbus man.

Columbus truck driver Iyman Farris pled guilty in 2003 to helping Al-Qaeda plan terrorist attacks in the US, and is was an admission that stunned his ex wife.

Geneva Bowling says, “It’s still hard for me to believe that he did.”

Two years later, Bowling knows that Faris was caught after agents monitored the couple’s phone without a court order. She told the Associated Press, “If you’re asking me if I think that’s fair, I think it is.”

Did we not lose track of Bin Laden in the 90’s because someone leaked information about our wiretaps on his cell phone? If this had not been leaked might we have been able to kill him prior to 9/11?

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks.

WTF is hard to understand about this people? There HAS to be a clear link to a terrorist network. And people are upset about this even though members of Congress have been briefed on it from the beginning:

This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

And the kicker:

As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks, and the commission criticized our nation’s inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn’t know they were here, until it was too late.

The Democrat’s can scream all they want for obvious political reasons. The leaders in the House and Senate we’re all briefed about this program, and Bush is coming out fighting because he KNOWS that everything is on the up and up: (via Mark Levin)

Some brief background: The Foreign Intelligence Security Act permits the government to monitor foreign communications, even if they are with U.S. citizens — 50 USC 1801, et seq. A FISA warrant is only needed if the subject communications are wholly contained in the United States and involve a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

The reason the President probably had to sign an executive order is that the Justice Department office that processes FISA requests, the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), can take over 6 months to get a standard FISA request approved. It can become extremely bureaucratic, depending on who is handling the request. His executive order is not contrary to FISA if he believed, as he clearly did, that he needed to act quickly. The president has constitutional powers, too.

It’s also clear from the Times piece that Rockefeller knew about the government’s eavesdropping, as did the FISA court. By the time this story is fully fleshed out, we’ll learn that many others knew about it, too. To the best of my knowledge, Rockefeller didn’t take any steps to stop the eavesdropping. And he’s no friend of this administration. Nor is he above using intelligence for political purposes, as his now infamous memorandum demonstrates.

He then goes on to detail the REAL story here:

But these leaks — about secret prisons in Europe, CIA front companies, and now secret wiretaps, are egregious violations of law and extremely detrimental to our national security. They are far worse than any aspect of the Plame matter. The question is whether our government is capable of tracking down these perpetrators and punishing them, or will we continue to allow the Times and Washington Post determine national security policy. And if these wiretaps are violative of our civil liberties, it’s curious that the Times would wait a year to report about it. I cannot remember the last time, or first time, this newspaper reported a leak that was helpful to our war effort.

The fact that such a program existed will go NOWHERE, and the Democrats know it. Now, will the fact that this highly classified information was leaked go anywhere? I can only hope.

Other’s Blogging:

Stop The ACLU
Right Wing Nuthouse
The Kellino Zone
Sister Toldjah
Small Town Veteran
Pros & Cons
Say Anything
Ace of Spades HQ
Redstate
California Conservative
The Political Teen
Mike’s America


I’m really amazed at the idiocy on the left. We are at war people! Do you think it’s just plain ole’ luck that we have not been attacked on our soil since 9/11? The real story about these wiretaps is the fact that the information about a highly classified program was leaked.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now: please consider this, and try not to immediately dismiss the search-and-seizure provision of our Constitution!

Since these are intercepts that happen overseas as part of the intel-gathering process, do you suppose that terrorists have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their communications? Especially in a time of war? Please.

Further, Daschle’s diatribe notwithstanding, SJ Res 23 said: Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.

Doesn’t it sound like the military intercepting enemy communications while stationed in the war zone would be part of taking “action to deter & prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States”?

Electronic intercepts in Kabul & Kandahar, Mosul & Basrah are part of military operations in war zones. The last I checked, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply there.

The Fourth Amendment protects only against unreasonable searches adn seizures. To the extent that picking up the phone and communicating with someone we are tapping is entitled to any privacy interest (ditto receiving emails and replying to them from such person, then the person whose security against searches and seizures cannot have that evidence used against him in a court of law. However, the government may still, not so hypothetically, initiate immigration proceedings against said person (there’s no “fruit of the poisonous tree problem there” that I can think of) and threaten to or even release said information to the country to which said individual would eb deported. That is precisely what the usual suspects have been wailing about at sites like ILW.com.

The right in the Bill of Rights that the Bush administration is unashamedly violating is spelled out very clearly:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now: please consider this, and try not to immediately dismiss the search-and-seizure provision of our Constitution!