If the Gore speech didn’t tell you that the lefties live on a differen’t plane of reality nothing will. They are still on the wiretap issue, you know the wiretaps done on international phonecalls between Al-Qaeda members and people in the states…traitors to our country. Phone calls made in minutes, much less then the time it would take to get a warrant, especially from FISA.
They are hanging their hat on this one as they did the WMD issue. We all know what happened with that issue, it went sideways on them when all the video started coming out showing almost every single Democrat saying the same thing Bush had said prior to the war from the mid 90’s on.
Will it happen to them again with the wiretap issue? You bet your ass skippy.
January 14, 2006 — THE controversy follow ing revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored suspected terrorist-related communications since 9/11 reflects a severe case of selective amnesia by The New York Times. It certainly didn’t show the same outrage when a much more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program came to light during the Clinton administration.
Then, it was Echelon, a National Security Agency program. Its mission, Steve Kroft noted on “60 Minutes,” was “to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”
The Times’ news story on the revelations stated calmly: “Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists.”
Of course, that was on May 27, 1999, and Bill Clinton ? not George W. Bush ? was president.
Despite the Times’ reluctance to emphasize privacy concerns, one of its sources in that same article, Patrick Poole, a lecturer in government and economics at Bannockburn College in Franklin, Tenn., had already done a study showing that the program had been abused.
“Echelon is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission,” Poole wrote. “The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of ‘unpopular’ political affiliation or for no probable cause at all . . . What was once designed to target a select list of communist countries and terrorist states is now indiscriminately directed against virtually every citizen in the world.”
The current controversy follows a Times report that, since 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies are eavesdropping at any time on up to 500 Americans suspected of communicating with terrorists.
But under Echelon, the Clinton administration was spying on just about everyone. “The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename Echelon, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, e-mail and telex message sent anywhere in the world,” wrote Poole.
[…]”Factual. Absolutely fact. No legend here,” answered Frost.
Even as the Times defended Echelon as “a necessity” in 1999, evidence already existed that the Clintonites had misused electronic surveillance for political purposes. Intelligence officials told Insight magazine in 1997 that they had spied on a 1993 conference of Asian and Pacific world leaders in Seattle hosted by Clinton ? and some of that information was passed on to big Democratic corporate donors for use against their competitors.
“The only reason it has come to light is because of concerns raised by high-level sources within federal law-enforcement and intelligence circles,” wrote Insight, “that the operation was compromised by politicians ? including mid- and senior-level White House aides ? either on behalf of or in support of President Clinton and major donor-friends who helped him and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, raise money.”
So, during the Clinton administration, evidence existed that:
* An invasive, extensive domestic eavesdropping program was aimed at every U.S. citizen;
* intelligence agencies were using allies to circumvent constitutional restrictions;
* and the administration was selling at least some secret intelligence for political donations.
These revelations were met by The New York Times by the sound of one hand clapping. Now, reports that the Bush administration approved electronic eavesdropping, strictly limited communications of a relative handful of suspected terrorists, have the Times in a frenzy.
It’s sad but not surprising that when Clinton had a program going that was MUCH more broad in its surveillence of American citizens the MSM and the left gave him a pass. In 1994 Jamie Gorelick was testifying about the legality of warrantless searches and intrusions and said the following:
“The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes,” Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, “and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General.”
“It is important to understand,” Gorelick continued, “that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.”
Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against “a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”…
…Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court ? if, as she testified, it “does not restrict the president’s ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security.” In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.
But Bush ok’d 30 wiretaps on international phonecalls between traitors and AL-Qaeda and he should be impeached according to the left.
Losers with a capitol L.
A few comments from the blogosphere:
Remember all those Democrats that were furious–just outraged–that President Bush dared to address his critics in a speech on Veteran’s Day? Well, I’m waiting patiently for their righteous indignation now that Al Gore has used Martin Luther King Day to attack the President on the NSA surveillance issue
Unfortunately for America, Gore didn?t have any legal opinions on the Echelon program authorized under the Clinton administration.
Gore further argued that, b) this anti-terrorism program of NSA foreign intel gathering?which has been a staple of US military intel work for decades?is ?a threat to the very structure of our government??a pronouncement that rivals Daschle?s for political tone deafness. The argument, for Gore, is this: foreign intel gathering that has to rely on picking up one end of the conversation in the US?that is, intel gathering that is forced to work under the situational dodges established by terrorists hoping to thwart our ?domestic wiretapping laws??is a threat to the very structure of our government, because it refuses to grant the legislative branch, in its current, disingenuous incarnation the ultimate authority to check the President?s war powers under AUMF. And that is what this is all about. In other words, if the legislative branch is not allowed to claim greater powers than the executive in the management of war?if they aren?t allowed to pump a few more pints of plasma into that ?living Constitution of theirs so that it expands its chest and turns the careful separation of powers into a more legislative friendly parliamentary republic?well, then the terrorists will have won.
Now Katzenbach wants America to disavow wiretaps altogether and cynically uses King Day to stump for that position. However, the two situations hardly prove analogous. Today we face an enemy that has already killed thousands of Americans in a sneak attack, using our open communications networks to stage and time the attacks for maximum effectiveness. In order to stop the next attack, we need to have the ability to grab data from those phone sets that have connections to al-Qaeda based on evidence and testimony — and to do it quickly. The calls that get intercepted cross international boundaries, so domestic calls still require (and get) warrants. The numbers come from captured phones and computer equipment directly tied to terrorists. Under those circumstances, the use of warrantless wiretaps makes sense and has prevented attacks on America, according to one Senator who participated in the briefing sessions from the NSA program.
Other’s Blogging:
They are hanging their hat on this one as they did the WMD issue. We all know what happened with that issue, it went sideways on them when all the video started coming out showing almost every single Democrat saying the same thing Bush had said prior to the war from the mid 90?s on.
Will it happen to them again with the wiretap issue? You bet your a** skippy.
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The President didn’t break the law, he used his authority on Art II of the Constitution, one that has been used MANY times by Presidents in the past, including ur hero on the leftside, Mr. “Perjury” Clinton.
Ethics! He has Clinton beat by a long shot when it comes to ethics, one of the most corrupt and vile administrations in history belongs to Clinton.
The CIA desk jockey was only a rogue cia agent out to take down Bush, and got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. The fact the only crime that was committed was a staffer lying (cough Clinton cough) speaks volumes about this incident. It’s not going no where, no matter how much you want it to.
You mean the WMD’s that left Iraq into Syria? You talking about those? Or how about the chemical weapons they DID find?
Go back to DummiesU where you belong, they need people like you who need to hear from others how they should think. Sad.
The point of the warrentless wiretapping outcry is that the President may have broken the law, and may feel that he is entitled to be above the law. What that law is about is kind of moot. But! Personally, I do not trust the responsibility of wiretapping to an administration that has no shred of wisdom or ethics. Valerie Plame, for example, or Chaney’s constantly reiterating the lie about Iraq being involved in 9/11. Or that big unfortunate exaggeration about weapons of mass destruction (mushroom clouds…) These episodes show that this particular group could not resist for one second the idea of wiretapping their political enemies, and that is exactly why the law was written.