“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you’d like to have in the future” – Donald Rumsfeld
“You go to war with the Laws you have, not the Laws you’d like to have in the future” – Chris Austin
Right wing talking points are now bouncing around in defense of President Bush’s decision to ignore federal law by allowing the NSA to illegally eavesdrop on taxpaying Americans, that invoke an idea that Clinton essentially did the same thing and how the press gave Clinton a pass as opposed to what the NYTimes did to Bush by breaking the story. To the true-believer this will suffice, but in fact, all this argument aims to do is trick us into viewing this three story colonial house as only a one story bungalow.
Righties justify their rationale that Clinton did exact ally what Bush did by invoking memories of the ECHELON program, with its roots originating during WW2 under Truman, and its branches still growing today. The urban legend that if you were to say the words ‘assassinate president’ or ‘bomb’ over the phone, that the feds would be breaking down your door a day later, is only partially right. The truth is, if you happened to utter a word the ECHELON computers were programmed to flag, the conversation in which you said those things would most likely be reviewed by the NSA. Keep in mind though, that this is a process that discriminates based on what is said, rather than who said it. Once analysis confirms you’re someone whose up to no good, a warrant allows for further surveillance.
Whether or not the program is legal has never (to my knowledge) been seriously challenged by Democrats or Republicans since its inception, but as with any capability like this, the opportunity for corruption is of course quite real. For this reason, in 1999 Republican congressmen Bob Barr and Porter Goss requested reports detailing whether or not safety measures were sufficient to prevent the ECHELON program from being subverted by national leaders for non-official, commercial or political purposes. Why did they want to know this? Well, quite simply, because that’s Congress’s job! In their capacity as federal lawmakers, the two Republicans rightly inquired about whether Americans’ 4th Amendment rights were being violated.
Keep in mind that neither Barr nor Goss were labeled ‘traitors’ or accused of ‘aiding the enemy’ throughout this entire inquiry. As they may or may not have known, the governments involved had used the program for both commercial and political purposes in the past. Kissinger used it to spy on an active Secretary of State, Margaret Thatcher used it to spy on members of parliament, Reagan used it to spy on Congressman Michael Barnes, Lockheed Martin used it to spy on Congressman Strom Thurman, Clinton used it to spy on Brazil and Japan for economic purposes, etc.
The difference between these transgressions and Bush’s of course is what the information is used for. Whereas political or economic spying cheats the system, criminal spying without a warrant, like information extracted through the use of torture, basically undercuts the ability of prosecutors to later charge and convict whoever’s breaking the law. Already we’ve seen signs that closing cases built upon illegal evidence gathering is next to impossible within our justice system. So the government may be able to apprehend someone dangerous, but once it comes time to prosecute, judges are obligated by law to throw the cases out.
It’s in this way that Bush’s system can potentially create more problems than it solves. For the former administrations that illegally wiretapped, once they had the information, the end they sought was achieved. Whereas Bush’s illegal wiretapping represents merely the first of many steps still left to come before the end he (and the American public) desires is realized. If the captured suspect is foreign, they can classify him as an enemy combatant and hold them indefinitely, baring the intervention of foreign governments that bring enough heat to convince the Bush administration that further detention of a specific detainee is a political liability. Typically this has happened when the detainee is either innocent or can prove that they were tortured, news of which hits the local papers in their nation of origin.
As for American citizens, it’s obvious for whoever’s following the case of Jose Padilla, that when corners are cut, the taxpayers lose their right to expect the justice they deserve. In Padilla’s case, the courts allowed the Bush administration to classify him as an enemy combatant, yet proving that he actually was became an uphill battle they apparently no longer have the stomach for. Why? Because the information they used to apprehend Padilla was provided by a detainee while being tortured. The Bush administration is forced to return to reality, and with reality being the monster that it is, they attempt to remove his enemy combatant status and instead prosecute him through the criminal courts. The judges who approved the enemy combatant status are having none of it, and in real time the short-sightedness of Bush’s methods are playing out right in front of us.
Take the Padilla case and the cases of every single other American detained based on information gathered using illegal wiretaps, and ask yourself an important question: What now? The Constitution will not allow the government to hold them forever without a charge, and knowing that once a charge is brought, a judge will be forced to throw it out based on ‘how’ the government found out what they did, who actually wins in the end? A person who very well might be guilty of the crime they’re charged with ends up walking. As counter-productive as that sounds, it’s exactly what Bush has brought upon us, all for the simple luxury of not having to get a warrant within 72 hours.
So in the end, anyone attempting to claim that Clinton’s use of the NSA was equal to or worse than Bush’s, is ignoring not only a mountain of facts, but reality itself for the sake of a ridiculously optimistic political gambit. What this reasoning requires is a set of very large blinders that block out all news of Padilla and every other detainee the Bush administration lets walk to save face politically. The ‘true-believer’ in this case must somehow be able to assume that our justice system will suddenly decide that centuries worth of legal precedent can and will be tossed in the garbage for the sake of a single President, out of the many we’ve had since Washington, who thought warrants were as ‘quaint’ as the Geneva Convention statutes.
To me and probably a good number of other taxpayers, the wiretapping in and of itself isn’t the offensive element here, but rather the fact that it could have been done legally with relative ease. For the sake of establishing a lower level of restraint on this executive and those to follow him, the United States justice system has been turned into a petri dish, used for experiments rather than it’s actual purpose. That being a tool for the President to utilize in locking up dangerous people who are plotting to kill you and I. How inappropriate a time to challenge the very lifeline to which you must rely on to get the job done.
Like a carpenter trying to build a house without tools, through the thoughtless execution of this crucial piece of the war on terror, every one of us must now live with the fact that while all the materials have been purchased, building permits obtained, the house may never be safe enough to live in. Instead of a hammer and nails, the walls are held up by duct tape and bungy cords. Why? Because the man in charge considered the tools of a carpenter ‘quaint’. His apprentice informs the family paying for the house, that in this day and age, old-fashioned methods, tools and planning are simply unnecessary. As a support beam comes crashing down the family gasps, staring at it all and feeling bewildered, the carpenter walks over with his right hand extended. “Don’t worry about that there, I’ve got this under control. Trust me.”
Lets talk about Padilla then.
Enough said here.
michellemalkin.com
Who’s side are you on Chris?
Today I find this to be more important than politics. So I rest, for the rest of today on my politcal rants.
I have this thing about quotes. The thing is I like to collect them and read them from time to time. Some, like this one, make you stop and think and even well up a little. If you do not well up a little listening to this I say you are not human.
Excerpt:
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Take the Padilla case ……….a warrant within 72 hours.
There are too many issues to tackle in this piece so I will take on the most glaring misunderstandings and work my way down.
The Constitution doesn’t apply to citizens of other nations, that is an ego centric way of thinking, that we can apply our laws to anyone in the world. Padilla, being a U.S. citizen acting agaisnt his country is treason but that isn’t the point.
Raking up notches on a prosecutors belt isn’t the goal of the Bush Administration or anyone in the defense department. The goal is to identify terrorists plotting an attack, neutralizing that attack and permanently identifying individual terrorists.
To think this is all about Matlock and Murder She Wrote and Scooby Doo bringing the bad guys to justice is naive. Neutralizing terrorists before they do any damage is the paramount goal, were I to have the choice of stopping the 9/11 murderers even though the means used would guarantee a mistrial then I go for stopping the attack.
I could care less that the government is listening in on calls between al-queda cells and all this talk about illegal this and warrantless that is a waste of time. I don’t care about O.J. Simpson style media circus trials where the NYT bloviates about how honorable the jihadist is or how racist America is. I want the government to know who al-queda is calling and what the conversation is about and this whole trial crap for foreign assassins is a crock.
Part of the reason Gore and Kerry lost the elections is that most people know these two guys wouldn’t be half as aggressive about protecting U.S. citizens as Bush is. Hell, these guys think it’s our fault 9/11 happened, we elected Bush just for this reason – he doesn’t let liberal talking points prevent him from keeping America safe
To me and probably a good number of other taxpayers, the wiretapping in and of itself isn’t the offensive element here, but rather the fact that it could have been done legally with relative ease.
You are going to have trouble with this one with liberals judges interfering in the warrent process and the NYT blowing wide open for everyone to see anything having to do with national security. I don’t trust Democrats to keep national secrets a secret, I don’t trust liberals lawyers, like the blind sheik’s lawyer, to keep anything secret and I don’t trust the liberal media to not tip off terrorists as to the governments plan to intercept them.
The Left has a horrible track record when it comes to thinking of America first or holding our culture with any respect or dignity. The self-loathing left is like the suicidal airline passenger who tries to open the airplane door at 33,000 feet. They care only for themselves and the propagation of their self-hate. Gore or Kerry as tough on national defense, it was joke then and still is now. Cut & Run Murtha is just another clown in the liberal circus.
RIGHT – you’re misunderstanding what I wrote:
“If the captured suspect is foreign, they can classify him as an enemy combatant and hold them indefinitely, baring the intervention of foreign governments that bring enough heat to convince the Bush administration that further detention of a specific detainee is a political liability. Typically this has happened when the detainee is either innocent or can prove that they were tortured, news of which hits the local papers in their nation of origin.
As for American citizens, it’s obvious for whoever’s following the case of Jose Padilla, that when corners are cut, the taxpayers lose their right to expect the justice they deserve.”
I clearly diferentiate between foreigners and American citizens.
How is it a waste of time? If the American terrorist is captured, but cannot be prosecuted, our strategy is wrong.
They can wiretap and get a warrant w/out losing operational effeciency. What do you propose Right, that we scrap the criminal justice system?
What you’re saying here is, if we capture an American terrorist and he’s set free, you could care less.
I’m on the side that gets results, and a failure to prosecute Padilla in a way that’s reflective of his crimes is not my definition of results.
Tough talk and chest pounding doesn’t mean a think in a courtroom.
We’re a nation of laws. If you want to convict an American, you can’t cut corners. We’re paying Bush and the NSA to do this RIGHT, not get macho, skip basic steps and cheat you and I from the justice we deserve.
If an American citizen is conspiring with terrorist organizations, it’s treason in my mind. I’m pretty sure you can get executed for that.
So if Padilla was conspiring (and the Malkin link is a good piece of evidence suggesting that he in fact was), then I want him to face an appropriate charge!
I don’t understand why you and Right would be comfortable with this going on. I can’t even count how many times I’ve turned on conservative radio in the past, to hear a talker lamenting over so and so who killed someone, but got off on a technicality.
So if a black man sells drugs and the investigators screwed up, meaning the charges get dropped…that’s an outrage – but if a terrorist gets off because investigators screw up, that’s just fine?!?!
You’re asking ME to pick a side? How about the side that does good work for us taxpayers and doesn’t f*&k something up as important as ensuring an American terrorist is able to be prosecuted!
How is it a waste of time? If the American terrorist is captured, but cannot be prosecuted, our strategy is wrong.
That is why I brought up the O.J. reference, you can be guilty as sin and beat a conviction in this country. Prosecutions don’t matter as long as terrorist attacks are thwarted.
They can wiretap and get a warrant w/out losing operational effeciency. What do you propose Right, that we scrap the criminal justice system?
I propose we stop trying to put everyone on trial and focus on stopping terrorism. Imagine if during WW2 we tried to prosecute in American criminal court every german soldier we captured during within the 60 day speedy trial rule. Terrorists are not soldiers, the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, they are masss murderers and our Constitution doesn’t apply. We will be humane but we shouldn’t be stupid.
What you’re saying here is, if we capture an American terrorist and he’s set free, you could care less. ?
Pretty much because if they went to trial and got off it would piss me off even more. Osama Bin Laden could go free in an American court because there is always some screwball who identifies with the guy. Imaging someone from the NYT is on the jury, that guy is going free. Suppose Ward Churchill or Ted Rall are on a jury for a terrorist, these guys would slip the terrorist a gun and help him escape.
The only thing I care about is stopping terrorist attacks and Bush is doing that very well.
IF you want results then you can not blame Bush for the NSA wire tappings. I do not get where you are coiming from sometimes.
Bush is trying, and so far succeding, in keeping terrorists from harming us on our home turf. Yet you rant and rave for his head because of NSA wire taps that actually prevented some planned terrorist activity.
The terrorists have no problem using our own resorces against us. If the goverment wants to read my emails amd listen to my phone calls in an attempt to keep the terrorists from carrying out attckas I am all for it. Listen all you want as I have nothing to hide.
I do not understand why Clinton could do this, to just about everyone byu the way, and Bush cant. The NYT picks its moments to be outraged and they are politically motivated in those decsions. If a Democrat had been responsible for NSA we would have heard nothing about it. The same could be said for the Euphora (sp?) wire taps. If that had been a republican administration the NYT would have called for impeachemnnt. Somehow I think this ended up on the wrong thread?
I’m on the side that gets results, and a failure to prosecute Padilla in a way that’s reflective of his crimes is not my definition of results.
This guy was stopped from commiting murder, he is identified as a terrorist for the rest of his life, the authorities will be aware of him forever and he’s given up intel to get other murderers. Those are great results in my book.
If you want to convict an American, you can’t cut corners.
I don’t necessarily want to convict them. Hopefully the public scrutiny and stigma of being a murderer will force them to leave the country. Prisons are over crowded as it is and is too expensive. I vote for deportation.
If an American citizen is conspiring with terrorist organizations, it’s treason in my mind. I’m pretty sure you can get executed for that.
If an American citizen is conspiring with terrorist organizations, it’s treason in my mind. I’m pretty sure you can get executed for that.
As long as there are judges who think child rapists should get 60 days in jail, the ACLU exists, people like O.J. go free and the 9th circus is in business, rest assured, no one will be convicted for treason against the U.S.
I don’t understand why you and Right would be comfortable with this going on. I can’t even count how many times I’ve turned on conservative radio in the past, to hear a talker lamenting over so and so who killed someone, but got off on a technicality.
War is different from criminal actions. Why wasn’t Yamamoto arrested in 1941 after the Pearl Harbor attack? It’s ridiculous to ignore national security so you can build an airtight criminal case which will probably end up hung on the technicality you brought up.
I can’t stress this enough. Forget about the courts, focus on national security, we are at war this isn’t some crime spree.
So if a black man sells drugs and the investigators screwed up, meaning the charges get dropped…that’s an outrage – but if a terrorist gets off because investigators screw up, that’s just fine?!?!
Apple and Oranges Terrorists need to be held as enemy combatants and shouldn’t even get a trial. When the war on terror is over they can go about their business.
important as ensuring an American terrorist is able to be prosecuted!
What the hell does prosecution do? Doesn’t make us any safer as we saw with teh blind sheik whose lawyer smuggled out messages to his assassins. With the war on terrorism, prosecution is the spending of large amounts of money with no real effect.
Frodo: I do not understand why Clinton could do this, to just about everyone byu the way, and Bush cant. The NYT picks its moments to be outraged and they are politically motivated in those decsions. If a Democrat had been responsible for NSA we would have heard nothing about it. The same could be said for the Euphora (sp?) wire taps. If that had been a republican administration the NYT would have called for impeachemnnt. Somehow I think this ended up on the wrong thread?
Again Frodo, you’re looking at the three story colonial house as if it were a one story bungalo.
Do you understand the difference between the ECHELON program and targeted wiretapping? They are two completely different mechanisms. Clinton inhereted the ECHELON program, which was up and running throughout the administrations of Reagan, Bush Sr., Carter, Ford, Nixon…all the way back to Truman.
You’re selecting Clinton out of all these Presidents to chastise for the ECHELON program. Then you’re pretending that the existance of that program is the exact same thing as providing the FBI a name and instructing them to conduct background checks, while the NSA records all communication in and out.
Do you understand the difference here? I thought I explained it well in the above piece. Every single one of the facts I presented in that essay can be checked with relative ease with a simple google search.
ECHELON and targeted wiretapping are two completely seperate concepts.
ECHELON and targeted wiretapping are two completely seperate concepts.
I’ll add that neither of these matter in a time of war. Clinton was about as filthy as politicians come and I think we can all agree on that. With that out of the way, none of this has any bearing in court if the government doesn’t bring a case. Is al-queda going to sue the U.S. for intercepting his terrorist calls? No. So this whole “illegal” wiretapping issue is a smokescreen for liberals to use against Republicans.
Right, in response to a purely political charge made by some that Clinton did the same exact thing that Bush is doing right now, the clarification is essential.
The difference is we are at war, these are extrrodinary times. The President is using all the tools he can to protect. I do not have a problem with that. Legal or not. Period. Listen to my phone calls, read my emails. Whatever it takes.
You do not seem to understand this point. At time of war law is the last thing to take into consideration. All the bad guys rotting in Guitanamo can rot as far as I am concerned.
Max Boot has a great column here:
LA Times – Opinion
The first 2 paragrahs are priceless.
“The Wiretaps Shouldn’t Bug Us”
“I CAN CERTAINLY understand the uproar over President Bush’s flagrant abuses of civil liberties. This is America. What right does that fascist in the White House have to imprison Michael Moore, wiretap Nancy Pelosi and blackmail Howard Dean?
Wait. You mean he hasn’t done those things? All he’s done is intercept communications between terrorists abroad and their contacts in the U.S. without a court order? Talk about defining impeachable offenses downward.
If you want to see real abuses of civil liberties, read Geoffrey R. Stone’s 2004 book “Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism.” It tells how John Adams jailed a congressman for criticizing his “continual grasp for power.” How Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and had the army arrest up to 38,000 civilians suspected of undermining the Union cause. How Woodrow Wilson imprisoned Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. And how Franklin D. Roosevelt consigned 120,000 Japanese Americans to detention camps.
You can also read about how presidents from FDR to Richard Nixon used the FBI to spy on, and occasionally blackmail and harass, their political opponents. The Senate’s Church Committee in 1976 blew the whistle on decades of misconduct, including FBI investigations of such nefarious characters as Eleanor Roosevelt, William O. Douglas, Barry Goldwater and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
All you have to do is recite this litany of excess to realize the absurdity of the cries of impeachment coming from the loonier precincts of the left. Muttering about “slippery slopes” isn’t enough to convince most people that fascism is descending. If the president’s critics want that part of the nation that doesn’t read the Nation to believe that he’s a threat to our freedom, they’d better do more than turn up the level of vituperation. They’d better find some real victims — the Eugene Debses and Martin Luther Kings of the war on terror.
Civil libertarians thought they were in luck when a college student in Massachusetts claimed that two FBI agents had shown up to interview him after he had requested a copy of Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book. Ted Kennedy cited this incident to warn of the Patriot Act’s “chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom.” Relax, Senator. Free speech is safe. The student lied.
The anti-Bush brigade hasn’t had any luck in turning up actual instances of abuse, despite no end of effort. The ACLU compiled a list of supposed victims of the Patriot Act. After examining each case, however, Sen. Dianne Feinstein — no friend of the administration — said “it does not appear that these charges rose to the level of ‘abuse.’ ”
Which isn’t to say there haven’t been some mistakes in the war on terror. Khaled Masri, a naturalized German citizen born in Lebanon, was snatched by U.S. agents in Macedonia and interrogated about his suspected terrorist links. When no such connection was uncovered, he was released five months later, complaining of mistreatment. Or there’s Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim convert who was arrested and held for a couple of weeks because his fingerprints seemed to match those found at the Madrid bombing.
Doubtless other innocent people have been detained or had their communications intercepted. No system is perfect. But there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that these were anything but well-intentioned mistakes committed by conscientious public servants intent on stopping the next terrorist atrocity.
And although the government has occasionally blundered, it has also used its enhanced post-9/11 powers to keep us safe. The National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps, which have generated so much controversy, helped catch, among others, a naturalized American citizen named Iyman Faris who pleaded guilty to being part of an Al Qaeda plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge.
No wonder polls show that most people continue to support Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism. As long as federal surveillance remains targeted on the country’s enemies, not on the president’s, the public will continue to yawn at hyperbolic criticisms of the commander in chief.
Frodo, if the government is reading your emails or mine, they’ve got their heads up their asses!
This has become a purely political defense now, even with the FBI stating that thousands of dead end leads are all that’s coming out of it.
Mull that over for a bit – they’re chasing down leads that bring them to the house of a grandmother, or someone like you or I. Talk about a waste of money! This is their strategy?!?!
Incompetence, waste…all on our dime. So now, after 9/11, instead of increasing productivity, we’re creating more needless work. Read up on the facts here Frodo – this program is a serious waste of time and manpower.
But it has made a difference you just do not seem or want to accknowledge that fact. There have been plots discovered and stoped. Soemthing that if our intelligence budget had not been cut so bad in the years running up to 9-11 we might have been able to aviod it.
Listen away I say. Wiretap listen to phone calls whatever it takes. Why do you not see that? I really do not understand your point or thought process on this point. It makes no sense.
Go ahead try and impeach the guy for protecting us. This is even more stupid than trying to impeach someone for getting a blow job.
Frodo – this is the process as I understand it:
1. The NSA listens in and identifies targets
2. NSA adds target to list of suspected terrorists (FAA crosschecks list prior to flight boarding)
3. NSA hands the target off to the FBI
4. The FBI investigates
5. Where possible the FBI builds a case and prosecutes
Thousands of these targets are identified by the NSA every month, and according to the FBI they are almost always dead ends.
You insist that the process has foiled terrorist plots, yet what plots are these? When one of these individuals is found out and subsequently locked up, it’s news, it’s in the press.
These are Americans – so when they’re detained, they contact their lawyer or are appointed one. The justice system takes over, and besides what a judge seals, the public is aware of the status of each.
If it’s a foreigner, they end up in Guantanamo most likely and go through a different process.
I’m trying to understand exactally who and what was foiled by this program.
BTW, what do you do for a living up in NH? I used to live in Manchester and before that in Derry (where my folks and sister still live).
I didn’t mention the word impeachment once…food for thought.