I haven’t had much to say on this FISA bit, and there are several reasons for this.
First, and I guess we can just chalk this up to either naivete or cynicism (or ignorance), and you can take your pick, I sort of just assumed that NSA and other agencies monitored foreign communications and monitored them for national security issues. I thought that is what NSA did. I thought that is what Echelon did. I thought that is what the big complex at Ft. Meade was for.
I don’t know if I am “‘OK” with that- but that is what I thought they did, and I had grown to accept it. I would be livid if they used these intercepts for issues unrelated to national security, like drug or other criminal issues, or corporate espionage, or spying on domestic political opposition, but I errantly was under the impression that NSA did just spy on foreign communications. Again, I am not sure if I am ok with that, but I thought that they had permission to do it, so it is a little difficult to get outraged about something you thought was happening all along. I am glad it is illegal and they are not doing what I thought they were, but I am having a hard time getting whipped into a frothing rage. Does that make sense?
Second, I am not sure what all actually has gone on. Was it just snooping intercepts between Al Qaeda agents? Because I am ok with that. Are they situations such as the one described here? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, to my knowledge.
Third, I am not convinced Bush has done anything wrong (and I mean in the legal sense) . The statutes are a complicated mess for a layman (loudmouth idiot) like me, and for every person in high dudgeon that Bush should be impeached, I can give you a security expert who claims what Bush did was within the letter of the law. Not surprisingly, the most strident critics are all Democrats, the most ardent supporters are Republicans (with the exception of Bob Barr). If it turns out he broke the law, I am not going to support him.
At any rate, putting all that aside, this is inexcusable:
WASHINGTON — In confirming the existence of a top-secret domestic spying program, President Bush offered one case as proof that authorities desperately needed the eavesdropping ability in order to plug a hole in the counter-terrorism firewall that had allowed the Sept. 11 plot to go undetected.
In his radio address Saturday, Bush said two of the hijackers who helped fly a jet into the Pentagon — Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar — had communicated with suspected Al Qaeda members overseas while they were living in the U.S.
“But we didn’t know they were here until it was too late,” Bush said. “The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities.”
But some current and former high-ranking U.S. counter-terrorism officials say that the still-classified details of the case undermine the president’s rationale for the recently disclosed domestic spying program.
Indeed, a 2002 inquiry into the case by the House and Senate intelligence committees blamed interagency communication breakdowns — not shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any other intelligence-gathering guidelines.
This is the strongest indication to me that they did do something wrong, and they know it.
Why can this gang not shoot straight? Why can they not tell the truth? Why?
On days like this, the Bush administration reminds me of heroin addicts. Junkies will lie to you- about everything. Sometimes they lie intentionally, sometimes accidentally, sometimes they can’t tell truth from fiction. But they never have any long-range concepts of time- it is just say whatever they can to get out of the current mess, with no regard for what is going to happen tomorrow, or what is going to happen when this false truth is uncovered. It is just deal with the right here and the right now, get their fix, and deal with tomorrow when it comes.
They don’t respect themselves. They don’t respect you. And they just do whatever they have to do and say whatever they have to say to get by.
I don’t think Bush is personally a bad man or an evil man. But I wonder what the hell is going on in this White House, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with these people and why they keep setting Bush up for the fall like this. Why would his advisors clear this speech if it is bullshit? At some point, when you deal with junkies and addicts, you have to quit trying to convince yourself that they are telling you the truth and realize that they can’t help themselves- they are going to rob you, they are going to lie to you, and they aren’t going to remember why tomorrow.
If this latest piece in the LAT turns out to be true, I will be at that point. I simply will refuse to believe anything this administration says.
*** Update ***
Jeff Goldstein, who apparently takes any discussion of this administration’s honesty and forthrightness personally, states I am talking smack and assumes it is a matter of bad faith:
John Cole works himself into quite a state today over an LA Times story he believes suggests that the President may have “lied”—a pronouncement upon which John’s commentariat pounces like angry terriers on a bloody lamb shank.
***Second, Cole’s reaction is so hyperbolic as to beg credulity.
Because this administration would never lie or embellish anything.
In short, Jeff’s real claim is that I am being sucked in by the LAT’s distortion of Bush’s statement. Why he couldn’t just say that without the charges of bad faith is beyond me.
demimondian
I was under the impression that FISA only applied to US persons — citizens, whether at home or abroad, or resident aliens. As such, the concern I have is that citizen’s may have been monitored by the NSA.
That, John, would be strictly off-limits. Only the FBI is allowed to monitor US persons, and then only with a warrant (except within 72 hours, with a post-dated warrant granted by the FISC.)
Lines
So its time for some Democratic shenanegans to change your mind and make you trust them again?
mickey
Why do you need yet one more piece of evidence of this administration’s willingness to lie and deceive before you finally stop believing anything they say?
ppGaz
John, I hereby take back, eat, retract and otherwise denounce every criticism I have ever made of you. Or ever will make in the future. This is one hugely honest and courageous post, AFAIC.
If you were ever trying to think of a way to shut me up …. this was it: I’m speechless.
Frank
John- I was having some hope for you when I finished your post. But now that I think about it, I have less. I think that even if all the facts about the LAT story come out it will be ambiguous. Encouraging the NSA to do maximal data mining of all communications in the world and hand the results over to people in other interested departments is arguably a form of interagency communications.
I haven’t posted on this subject because I’m not that concerned about it frankly. I think Bush has probably broken the law here and lied about it, but I don’t consider either of those to be unusual behavior for him, and losing my privacy concerns me much less than even a distant possibility of being kidnapped, held in secret, and/or being tortured to death.
You have given one of the best descriptions I have ever heard of the nature of the Bush administration though. Kudos for that. You must have some experience with junkies
KC
I also have to differ with you John. I just finished a thesis on executive privilege and the records of California Governors and had to look into presidential privilege/records/Nixon for it. FISA was set up specifically to deal with these kinds of issues. It was a reaction to the overreaching of the Nixon administration as well as the longterm warrantless spying on Americans conducted by the FBI. When I first read about this story, I was utterly shocked, both at its implications and the assertion of executive power by the administration. After all, how can an executive order overrule a statute of Congress, much less the Constitution, with respect to warrantless searches?
That said, I wonder the same thing. Is it just a matter of principle that these people have to assume executive authority over all matters? Dick Cheney has made it clear he believes executive authority has been encroached upon too much by the Courts and Congress. Are all their actions respecting torture, spying, presidential records, Freedom of Information, etc. really about terrorism, or just expanding the limits of executive power? We really need an answer here, badly.
Mike S
The combination of the FISA story with the news that the FBI and DOD are monitering groups like the Quakers and the Catholic group leads me to believe that there is far more involved in this. The lie described in the article had no effect on me because that is SOP with this administration.
Neither do I. Nor do I think most of the polititions that I oppose are “evil” but I do think they are wrong. We disagree on where this country should be/go but not on whether we love our country. I’ve gotten in big arguments with people who say that Republicans are inherently EEEeeeeeevil and often wonder where these people can possibly live that they don’t have any Republican friends.
Anderson
John, if you’re really interested in understanding the legalities, check out Marty Lederman at Balkinization, who has several posts on the subject.
Re: the issue of whether it’s only Qaeda ops being spied on, see this from Lederman (he begins quoting Gonzales; bolding mine not his):
Remember the assistant solicitor general arguing before the Supreme Court that a little grandmother who donated to a Muslim front group that supported al-Qaeda could, in principle, be detained as an enemy combatant? Same idea here?
John Cole
KC- I have come to no iron-clad decision about whether this was legal or illegal, so I don’t think we are really disagreeing. Just you have come to a conclusion, I have not.
I still do not know why they would lie about this in a pseech, though.
And yes, I have some personal experience dealing with junkies as well as having been a probation officer.
Andrei
Neither do I.
I think he’s basically a moron. Or to put it more mildly, he’s intellectually challenged. He quite simply is not nor never has been presidential material. Nothing in his life story suggests he ever was and so much of his life story suggests he was the best possible puppet candidate for a lot of power hungry conservatives that wanted someone like him in the White House to get their agenda enacted. There’s also a lot of evidence to suggest Bush is nothing more than a mouthpiece to the GOP agenda, hardly driving or shaping it in any real form.
I have yet to hear an original idea come out of his mouth. When presented with unscripted events or impromtu speaking engagements, the man is petulant, unsure, convoluted and simple-minded. He has been presented to the American people like a product and marketed like a product. And enough people have bought it.
And yes, that speaks volumes about the Democrats that they can’t beat someone who is as a big a moron as I find in President Bush.
KC
I think Kevin Drum underscores John’s central point about trust and this administration. We’re really setting a dangerous precedent here with this one.
Matt F.
Quick comment about the legality of the program:
I don’t think there’s any question that this program does not comply with the requirements of FISA, regardless of the dust kicked up by Maviva, Goldstein, and Robbins at NRO. Considering the hot water the administration’s in over this, if the NSA program complied with FISA you can bet they’d have said so, right away.
Prof. Kerr says there may be details about the program — such as where the data interception takes place — that take it outside of FISA’s application. He thinks that maybe the administration won’t say as much because it would give something away.
But I don’t buy it. They could have easily said, “This program complies with the technical requirements of FISA. We can’t tell you exactly how, because its classified, but it does.” Whether that would have satisfied a lot of critics is questionable. But the fact that they haven’t once said that makes it pretty clear that they have no argument that they actually did comply with FISA.
Right?
John S.
John-
No arguments here…not a single point. Thanks for laying it out in such a way that it will be difficult for the usual hacks to embrace your words on either extreme end of the political spectrum in order to uphold their own views.
Now we just have to wait and see what happens. And if they forego an independent investigation on this matter, then something truly is rotten in Denmark.
TallDave
WTF? Where in that is there any indication they did anything wrong? Did other screw-ups also lead to 9/11? Of course. Does that mean this wasn’t necessary? No.
The most likely, logical, sensible explanation is that they did this to protect Americans, not as some evil plot to destroy civil liberties.
jg
A weak King who can only wage war for the country and all economic and social policy carried out on a state by state basis. Welcome to the Independant States of America.
Ever wonder what the US would be like if the south had won?
Doctor Gonzo
Citizens of this country are protected by the 4th amendment and by specific laws like FISA. The NSA does strictly extra-territorial stuff: they spy on people abroad, not U.S. citizens. They are explicitly told to stay away from U.S. citizens. So if anybody who was spied upton is a citizen, Bush has clearly and knowingly broken the law.
I’m tired of hearing people say that this is needed because we haven’t been attacked in four years, so it obviously works. Guess what, after 1993, we weren’t attacked by al-Qaeda for eight years, and we didn’t require secret snooping. Besides, there is no proof this is accomplishing anything. I can say that my computer, which I bought in October of 2001, is similarly preventing terrorist attacks: after all, we haven’t had once since I bought it!
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Excellent analogy, John. I like how it explains a lack of any organizing principle within the administation beyond “because I want/wanted to.”
TallDave
And I’m sure all the lefties outraged by the Plame leak will be demanding their heads.
Richard Bottoms
The road to hell…
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Boo on that too-long link, TD.
space
Is this a serious question? If so, the answer is rather simple. They are quite used to having their bullshit swallowed and regurgitated by the media.
Yes, the media is starting to question Bush about his Iraq deceptions. But let’s be honest, 90% of the b.s. should have been caught the moment it left Bush’s mouth. The aluminum tubes? That wasn’t discredited after the SOTU. That was widely known to be b.s. by January 2003. I literally sat in front of the TV betting myself as to whether Bush would have the balls to cite the aluminum tubes crap.
I could go on and on, but the truth is that at this point the Bush administration has no idea when the media will call them on their b.s.
Mike S
The Republicans were in charge of both houses of congress, the country was scared shitless and the President was given carte blanche to get anything passed in the name of “National Security” that he wanted. Yet he didn’t even try. Bills aren’t even read before they are voted on anymore so changing the rules would have been easier than ever. Yet he didn’t even try.
And now they lie about why they needed to do it.
Tim F.
Damn.
Also, if you edit TallDave’s link down to a short hyperlink (it’ll go to the same place of course) the margins will return to planet Earth.
Andrei
TallDave, please buy yourself a clue and learn how to make tiny urls or how to write HTML to create plain old links inline. You have just queered the layout of this article. It’s bad enough with you queering everything else.
As for:
You know what involuntary manslaughter is, right? It makes no difference if you didn’t mean to kill someone with your car when they stepped out onto the street in a crosswalk where pedestrians have the right of way. That you killed them means you’ll receive some form of punishment to fit the crime.
If the administration broke the law, they would now be at the mercy of public opinion and the court on the nature of their punishment. It has nothing do with their intention to “protect Americans.”
Gratefulcub
No one has a problem with spying on al Quaeda members, or supporters, etc. The problem here is that they removed the oversight of another branch of government. Now, they can monitor anyone they condsider to be a terrorist. Considering how they have used that word in the past, that is scary.
But, John is right. We will eventually find out what exactly is going on, we don’t know yet. Except for TallDave and Darrell. And yes, some of our leftist breatheren as well. But we will.
TallDave
This is probably a difference of opinion. What a shock, an MSM journalist found someone who disgrees with the admin’s take on a classified case.
As with the aluminum tubes and the Niger claims, there is probably one school of thought that says one thing (we should have had wiretaps) and one that says another (the problem was something else entirely). Whenever Bush espouses one side, the MSM immediately find someone to espouse the opposite view and claim Bush must be lying. The admin usually can’t debate them, because the info is classified.
TallDave
Not according to Clinton’s AAG.
Sorry if the link screwed anyone up. It displays fine on my screen.
Another Jeff
Part of the problem with this too is the whole “he’s a delegator” thing. Obviously you have to delegate, but you also have to be completely aware of what’s going on, and also must have total trust and loyalty of those and from those to which you’ve delegated.
OCSteve
Trying to pinpoint where you think the lie is JC.
Where does it say this did not occur?
Where does he say it would have prevented that problem. He said helped address it.
Here we go again. The same officials who leaked it to begin with perhaps?
Really? The inquiry did not place any blame on intelligence-gathering guidelines?
I pass. This will just turn into a repeat of two other threads where anything factual or relevant I post is dismissed in favor of personal attacks and jamming those blinders on even tighter.
Later all.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Same when the left says something. Welcome to journalism in the 21st century.
Lines
Just like the fact that the INEA told the world that the Aluminum Tube claim was a bunch of BS, but it was classified, so our ears just didn’t pass it onto our brains.
Wow, TD is really just going way out there to try to make a failed point.
… just another “baby-eatting” is ok, knee-jerk defender with nothing to really say. Good job on dragging down another thread, TD.
Gratefulcub
Yeah, the aluminum tubes was just a disagreement.
stickler
Yeah, but here’s the real hi-larious thing about that: it was obvious BEFORE NOVEMBER 2004. So anybody who saw that, disregarded it, and voted for George W. “More of the same!” Bush is an idiot. That election was about the very existence of the Republic. The Republic lost.
And having a “revelation” about how mendacious and truth-challenged W’s team is, a year after it mattered, is laughable.
neil
This is a far more modest and well-explained post that one would expect with this title. Bravo!
Tractarian
When you say “foreign communications”, you really mean “foreign communications originating in the US”, right John? Because that is what the big fuss is about here. You are right that the NSA’s job is to spy on foreign communications. But here we have warrantless surveillance on US citizens communicating with people abroad. That is what FISA is directed at preventing, and that is the law that was broken.
It seems pretty clear to me that Bush broke the letter and the spirit of FISA by ordering these wiretaps and failing to get a warrant for them. And it is ludicrous for him to argue, as he did, that he needed to break this law for national security – after all, it isn’t the wiretaps themselves that are made illegal by FISA, it’s the fact that they were made without a warrant.
The only plausible argument for legality is that FISA itself is unconstitutional for encroaching upon the executive’s powers with respect to national defense. But this is a stretch, because you would have to argue that not only does the President have the constitutional right to engage in domestic surveillance, but that he has the constitutional right to do so without a warrant.
Another reason the constitutional argument is a stretch is that if you take it to its logical extreme, it would render all defense-related legislation unconstitutional, because theoretically any defense-related legislation encroaches at least a little bit on the president’s power of national defense.
TallDave
Lines,
The CIA maintined all along the aluminum tubes were for uranium enrichment. Other agencies disagreed.
Difference of opinion.
And then idiots say “BUSH LIED!!”
Sad.
John Cole
Yes, Tractarian. Just sloppy writing on my part.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
I eagerly await the bombshell that reveals there was “creep” within the data-mining, and the information gathered was used for political gain and personal vendettas.
It always happens, you know.
TallDave
Sheesh, you lefties are seriously brainwashed. Did you really think there was no evidence the tubes were for nukes? Did you think Bush just made it up? Difference of opinion.
Hint guys: DailyKos is not a news source.
Ancient Purple
It would help if you provided a link, Dave.
Uberweiss
Can somebody please tell me if this is such a big issue because Bush did it or because of the fact that American citizen’s rights have been abused and trampled on? I have said it before and I will say it again; “I think it’s a bit naive to believe that Bush is the first president to abuse this”. It’s the NSA and the government, they do whatever they want and we will never know anything about it. Does anybody know the extent of CIA operations around the world, throughout history? The answer is no. The only reason we know about this instince is because people want to make this administration look even worse then before and to try to get Bush removed from office. Do I think that is a horrible idea? No. Do I think Bush has broken the law and lied to the American people? Yes. Do I think Bush will keep lying to the American people? Yes. But as I said, it is really naive to believe this is the first time anything like this has ever happened and this will be the last time something like this will happen.
Lines
Hint TallDave: The INEA and other agencies blew the BS whistle on the aluminum tubes. They are the real experts.
Doctor Gonzo
Can somebody please tell me if this is such a big issue because Bush did it or because of the fact that American citizen’s rights have been abused and trampled on?
It is about the rights. It doesn’t matter who is president. If Hillary is elected in 2008 and she does this, it will be just and wrong, and you can be sure that people like TallDave who are currently defending Bush will be screaming for impeachment immediately.
I have yet to hear one credible piece of evidence that shows that the intelligence systems and protections we have in place are inadequate to the task. Are there huge problems with individual agencies sharing information, working together, getting computer equipment upgraded, and so on? You bet. But the solution to that is to get these agencies with the program, not to ignore the law and the Constitution and act like the president can do whatever he wants because we are in a perpetual war. For all those people who think that a wartime president can act this way: when will this war end? Or are you perfectly okay with warrantless searches being performed until every last terrorist in the world is dead?
John S.
It would probably help you to unravel Dave’s mysterious logic, which ultimately doesn’t help him to make his case.
Therefore, I wouldn’t count on him helping you to help deconstruct his argument.
TallDave
Hint Lines: That’s what a difference of opinion is.
Pb
TallDave,
I’d certainly like to know why the CIA made such a shoddy analysis that just happened to support the administration’s blatant point of view on the aluminum tubes–maybe that would shed some light on things. Of course, that would require oversight, and we can’t have that, now can we…
jg
Yet it was the exact oppopsite that was true. they weren’t suitable for centrifuges and were suitable for missiles. So yoiu either believe our intelligence apparatus in completely incompetent or that they produced the intel that supported the belief. Shouldn’t an analysis present data without drawing a conclusion?
Darrell
Fair enough. No one that I’ve read disputes the President’s authority regarding intelligence gathering on foreign enemies. Seems like a reasonable grey-area interpretation for Bush to interprat that as meaning that the law didn’t require them to get warrants IF the targets of the surveillance weren’t US citizens. Info obtained under such warrantless monitoring absolutely cannot be used against US citizens. Seriously, is that such a draconian interpretation and action on the part of the Bush admin? Former Associate AG under Clinton thinks it’s entirely reasonable of Bush, as do a lot of others.
Whether Bush overstepped his authority we shall see. But his interpretation was not unreasonable, far from breaking the “letter and the spirit” of the law as has been asserted here.
Darrell
I have read that it can take a week or more to put together an application for a warrant and then the court can take months to act. If true, given the volume of info that must be sorted through and pursued, that would seem to be more than credible reason to forgoe the warrant, especially when only a foreign terrorist is the target of investigation
TallDave
My God you lefties are stubbornly impervious to facts.
Look, the CIA thought the tubes were for nukes. The DIA agreed with them. DOE disagreed. INEA disagreed. A contractor disagreed. So there was a difference of opinion. What did Saddam really have in mind for them? Only Saddam knows.
The point is, there can be differences in opinion in the intel community, and only brainwashed idiots will try to label them as admin lies.
jg
You read wrong. There is no delay in setting up the wiretap. The president has authority to do that immediately. He doesn’t need to wait for a court order.
He does have to apply for a warrant after he set up the tap. Within 72 hours. Its called oversight. Otherwise he can tap anyone he wants. I would hope he only did it for my defense. Unfortunately history has shown the power corrupts and hoping is a fools game.
Thats all justification for not going to get a warrant upfront. He isn’t required to do that.
Darrell
French intelligence also agreed, telling us that they also ran all these tests on the tubes, and that they were engineered to such a level that no way would such an engineered tube be used for mundane mortars or other applications
Darrell
I said that it could take a week or more to put together an application to obtain a warrant and months for the court to act. There is no ‘delay’ only after a warrant is issued
TallDave
And if he did, say by monitoring the Kerry campaign or the press, I think it goes without saying he should be impeached, wartime or no.
But let’s not be surprised when the Rather-esque MSM tries to hype the evidence against him, or even manufacture it.
John S.
More bad news for the gang that couldn’t shoot straight
Source
jg
No only brainwashed idiots don’t realize differences of opinion amongst people of comparable values should cause you to rethink your point. Do you have access to any info that doesn’t show the tubes were used for centrifuges? You pasted something thats lists lots of reasons to believe they are centrifuge parts, where’s the counter argument that should be included in any analysis?
jg
No Darrell you are wrong. Bush or Clinton or Roosevelt or Washington, any and all can tap a phone right now and apply for the warrant in 72 hrs. This is current law. Its called FISA. Bush says he doesn’t have to do the second part. He doesn’t have to go to a court and say who he spied on or why. This is contrasry to current law.
Darrell
Attention sh*t for brains, I never disputed that. Never. What I said, and I said it clearly and repeatedly, is that often times 72 hours is NOT ENOUGH TIME to put together the paperwork for a warrant application.
Doctor Gonzo
I’d be interested in hearing the source of that. The fact that warrants can be received 72 hours after eavesdropping kinda negates the time issue. After all, that provision wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t used.
But just the fact that it might take some time to put a warrant together is not evidence that this has caused problems in the past, or that spying on people without a warrant is doing lots of good for the country. Given this administratin’s tendency to trumpet anything that goes even remotely right for them, if these secret intercepts had really stopped a terrorist attack, we would know about it.
OCSteve
Not that FISA is unconstitutional, but that FISA does not limit the executive’s inherent constitutional powers.
The rest of your argument is based around “domestic surveillance”. The intent of this is to gather foreign intelligence. But it’s tough to listen to only one side of a conversation.
My only issue with this whole thing would be if it comes out that information gathered this way was then used to procure a warrant for something else unrelated to terrorism. But that is what the periodic review is for. Changes were made along the way when concerns were raised.
TallDave
Darrell is right, read my top post. These requests are being filtered by DOJ. It’s a bottleneck, 72 hours or no.
Darrell
Actually, it’s pretty much universally ackowledged that the monitoring of foreign terrorists, which was the purpose of Bush’s executive order, has saved countless lives.
TallDave
Bush critics say the warrantless searches are unnecessary because FISA allows the government to obtain approval up to 72 hours after a search. But as National Review’s Byron York reported on Monday, the 9/11 Commission last year complained that even after the Patriot Act’s changes to FISA, “Many agents in the field told us that although there is now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow. Requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them and to conduct the surveillance. The Department of Justice and FBI are attempting to address bottlenecks in the process.”
jg
But how would we know? He would have to tap Kerry, then within 72 hrs apply for the warrant explaining why he tapped Kerry. Bush wants to not have to go for the warrant therefore we would never know who he tapped. I don’t hink he is but the point of the law is to prevent corruption not catch it.
Darrell
I would point out that not only was Bush’s program entirely reasonable, it was far less draconian and far more monitored than any other wartime President in history that I can see. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong on that point.
Uberweiss
I’m sorry but how do you know this? Is there an article, a gallop poll?
nyrev
For the love of God, can’t anyone fix the margins on this page? TallDave’s lack of common sense messing up what was once a perfectly good thread may be a good metaphor, but it’s a damned annoying one.
DwightKSchrute
Another to add to the list of blather coming out of the mouth of these junkies- this one from Treasury Sec Jack Snow:
Sipping a latte at a Starbucks coffee shop with reporters in Washington two days ago, he said that “the president’s legacy will be one of having significantly reduced the deficit in his time,” and said Clinton’s budget was a “mirage” and “wasn’t a real surplus.”
Snow said the Clinton surplus was inflated by a stock-price bubble and that Bush will be remembered for cutting the gap from a record $412 billion in the 2004 fiscal year.
Darrell
If Bush ever authorized the tapping of Kerry, and Kerry was not communicating with somebody who was damn likely a terrorist, then time to bring up impeachment hearings. But given the oversights, reviews, and consultations, I find it very, very unlikely
Andrei
Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated crap of the highest order.
You know what I can do in 3 days? A fuckton. Entire armies have been coordinated and sent into battle in 3 days time. Asking people to fill out paperwork and get a warrant from a judge within 3 days after starting a wiretap is more than enough time. It’s just paperwork.
Good lord… Please refrain from giving us insights into your world view or thinking Darrell… it really is obscene of the highest order.
The Other Steve
The link to froggyruminations makes this statement:
Yet to the best of my knowledge, not once has anybody argued this. Much of the frothing of the rightwing has been over strawmen such as this. Claims that we’re all trying to not keep us secure, blah blah blah. It’s easy to win an argument, when you don’t address the argument.
From my understanding of the FISA act, they are allowed to act immediately on information, and go to that special court to notify them. The issue here is entirely about going to the Courts to notify, and that is what the Bush administration decided to circumvent.
I don’t know about Echelon. That was something from 1998 and to my knowledge was never implemented. There’s always been a suspicion that it’s just impossible to implement monitoring of all traffic at a technical level simply because of the vast amount of data. So it’s assumed that what they are doing is triggered, that they are targetting certain phones, email addresses, etc. based on a web of information. That seems to be what the LAT article states as well.
And again, I don’t have a problem with that. As long as they’re following procedure.
What I don’t like is this notion being pushed by Republicans that somehow they are above the law. It’s not just Bush. Abramhoff, Delay, Frist… they’re all in this. This power has corrupted their very beings, and they have entirely lost track of what this nation means, and what is more important.
Pb
TallDave,
ROFL… Yeah, I’m worried that some might have hyped and/or manufactured evidence all right, but I’m not thinking of the MSM here… :)
bago
You know, you can just lie to make a difference of opinion, and then declare classified, so that you can shut down the debate. After billions of dollars have been spent. Funnily enough going into corporations controlled by your biggest donors.
How many people would lie for hundreds of millions of dollars? How many liars get into politics? How many politicians would lie if they could just classify the information and not be exposed, while earning hundreds of millions of dollars?
The entire republican MO has been about enriching other republicans. From Delay to Abramoff, from faith based initiatives to no-bid contracts, from ballooning federal spending faster than LB-fucking-J, to giving Stevens 200 million dollars for not building his 200 million dollar bridge.
The torture issue can be looked at the same way. Torture provides bad info, like the false Iraq/911 link. This is classified so nobody finds out for years, then they can say it was the best intel they had at the time. Forcing other people to lie, to enact their agenda. An agenda that is suspiciously profitable to republican donors/fundraisers/politicians all the way through.
The buck stops here indeed.
ppGaz
Here’s a case study in what happens when Darrell gets an idea into his head. This is day three, at least, of the prolonged “72 hours isn’t enough time” shriek from this guy.
If 72 hours is not enough time, then is three or four years enough time to GET THE FUCKING LAW CHANGED? Or is it easier to just ignore the law and let the barking hyenas and Darrells of the world sit out here and repeat this nonsensical crap day and night??
jg
WHO cares how long it takes to apply for the wiretap? You already listened. You got whatever you needed. If theres weas actionable intelligence they act on it. The warrant application can be left to some staff clerk to fill out and follow through on. Its no longer an issue. It doesn’t stop you from taking further action. You’d need the warrant to prosecute a US citizen but prosecutions take months. All this can be done under current law.
What needs to be changed? How is Bush hamstrung?
Darrell
The NY Times article which broke the story acknowledged that numerous terrorist plots had been foiled. Sorry you didn’t bother to read
The Other Steve
Unfortunately this doesn’t surprise me.
You know it’s one thing for someone like DougJ, or Darrel to make these stupid statements. It’s all political campaign rhetoric.
But it’s entirely something different to have the guys in charge actually believe this crap.
The Bush legacy is going to be one of nearly doubling the amount of debt this nation holds. Given that this debt load is likely to cause us signifigant pain in the next 5-10 years… that legacy is not going to be a kind one.
It’s not about the deficit… it’s about the debt… moron.
Sheesh, I could be a better Treasury Sec. than this idiot.
Darrell
Whoops, you applied for the warrant in 6 days rather than 3. We do not permit you to use any intel from that illegal wiretap to hunt terrorists. Sorry, but that’s the law.
Anything else you need spelled out for you jg?
Tractarian
Reasonable? Yes. Less draconian? Sure.
But is it legal?
The Other Steve
I think it’s interesting how TallDave is stating this as fact, when he clearly has no knowledge of this.
The LAT article quotes an official who says 24 hours is all that is required, and calls the Bushies lazy.
Darrell
Bush spending is horrible. But the current budget measure in congress is one of Dems blocking spending cuts. So much for Dems being any better
Tractarian
Darrell, you seem to be confusing the rules of evidence with the rules of intelligence gathering.
Whatever intel we get, we can use to “hunt” terrorists. We may not be able to use it in court, but this isn’t about trial preparation, is it?
jg
Would only matter if the intent was to PROSECUTE terrorists. We don’t intend to do that. The intel is used to locate and intercept. After we listened it don’t matter if the warrant is approved in most cases. Thats why the law doesn’t need to be changed or circumvented. The law prevent prosecutorial action from occurring from the taps without warrant. We don’t want to prosecute.
John Cole
Just out of curiosity, how much exactly is a fuckton?
Is that more than a shitload?
Darrell
This is a squabble over definitions of Executive power. Bush made a reasonable, justifiable interpretation of the law. Clinton’s former associate AG agrees with Bush as do others. The Senate Judiciary hearings will probably sort out whether Bush’s interpretation stands or not
Uberweiss
Sorry, no reason to get so snippy. I was just wondering. I was curious where you got that info from. I didn’t happen to see that article.
Darrell
So you are saying that the Bush administration should use illegally obtained information in direct violation of FISA rulings. And make no mistake, that is precisely what you are saying
Matt F.
A very solid legal critique of the NSA program, contra Chicago Tribune and Professor Sunstein, can he found here, of all places.
It’s important for those of us fighting this to emphasize that the Administration is plainly and unequivocally arguing that it has the Constitutional authority — despite the laws of Congress and the requirements of the 4th Amendment as enforced by the courts — to conduct electronic surveillance on American citizens without any external oversight whatsoever regarding who it targets or what methods it employs. Make no mistake about it: this is the essence of unlimited “wartime” powers. And it’s a dangerous, meritless argument.
ppGaz
Why hasn’t Bush had time to get the law changed to expand the 72 hour limit, Darrell?
Why would he choose to ignore the law rather than just change it to fit the new requirement?
JWeidner
Source it then and let us all read for ourselves.
and
What experience do you have to make this claim?
Darrell
To the exact contrary of what you stated, there is most definitely ‘external oversight’ in the form of judicial reviews, bi-partisan congressional reviews, and independent members working for the executive branch. You want to make the argument that those are not enough? Go ahead and make that argument. But you dishonestly mischaracterize the program by stating “without any external oversight whatsoever”
I think that’s an entirely accurate summary of your ‘logic’
Lines
Once again, another thread where Darrell screams, kicks his heals, and generally queers a thread. he just repeats himself over and over and over and over, waiting for his rant to become true.
Somewhere around 24 hours to write up a request for permission to wiretap, in which you have 72 hours from the beginning of the wiretap to turn it in. Approval is not guaranteed, but doesn’t stop the wiretapping until the decision is made. Do you not get that? Why should the Executive have the power to go around this law? We arn’t at war, there is no formal declaration. Where did his sudden expansion of powers come from? Maybe he made an executive order that ordered his executive order secret that made it ok for him to spy on Americans at will?
Wow, Darrell, you just don’t get it, do you? I think you just come here to bait, not debate.
Doug
I’ll betcha Bush could’ve gotten Congress to spring for more staff attorneys if filling out the paperwork was the problem. Or, hell, turn in the paperwork late and see if the judges complain. Or go amend the law to make it a week. You don’t just ignore the law.
At this point, though, the question isn’t FISA. It seems pretty clear that Bush broke the FISA law. The question is whether Article Two of the Constitution gives Bush the authority to ignore the FISA law. That’s a pretty tough argument to make for strict constructionists and textual purists who seethe at the idea of Constitutional penumbras.
jg
Huh? You do have a reading problem don’t you?
I said if Bush followed current law he would have all the tools he needed to hunt terrorists. Submitting the warrant app doesn’t stop him from using whatever he gained to hunt down terrorists.
Darrell
Re-read the citations on this thread, read some articles, and then grow a brain
ppGaz
Why has Bush ignored the law rather than simply have it updated to reflect the new “need” for more than 72 hours to “do the paperwork”, Darrell?
Davebo
.
Yep, the foiled a plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch.
Good thing too, no one would have noticed guys blowtorching the Brooklyn Bridge for 4 or 5 days.
PotVsKtl
What in the holy hell are you talking about? Are you entirely without the ability to form a rational opinion or interpret the English language? The way Bush has been doing it for 3 years is not usable as evidence either.
Darrell
jg, if the wiretaps were illegal, any information garnered from those wiretaps could not be used to a) hunt terrorists or to b) prosecute them, whatever that means. Have we ever ‘prosecuted’, as in criminal trial, a non-American terrorist?
ppGaz
Yes, and their Bin Laden Bridgework Specialists panel truck could also be a dead giveaway.
Pooh
TallDave says:
I think that statement is generalizable…
Doctor Gonzo
Look. The NSA is intercepting foreign communication all the time. And they can pretty much do whatever they want with it. That’s not the issue here. I have no problem with the government doing this. It’s going to happen, it should happen.
I really doubt the whole “it takes too long for the paperwork” nonsense. All the paperwork has to show is probable cause. That’s it. The FISA court hardly turns down any warrant requests, because the bar is set lower and it’s not too difficult to show probable cause.
The system should work like this: the NSA hears some chatter abroad. Eventually, they may intercept something from abroad to an agent here in the U.S. They keep the intel and get a warrant after the fact. With the warrant in hand making eveything nice and legal, they give the information to the FBI, who can then start on some domestic information gathering.
Why can’t it work like this? And if it doesn’t work like this, why can’t we have an honest debate in Congress to get it to work like this? Why does Bush think he can just do whatever he wants whenever he wants? The system I described is not complicated, nor would most people have a problem with it. So why can’t it work like that?
ppGaz
Darrell, why would a president choose to ignore a sound, established and lawful procedure because of a 72-hour time limit? Wouldn’t he just work to get the law changed so that it worked properly? Isn’t that his job, to send up laws for approval that serve the country?
Why would he do that, Darrell?
Matt F.
Not sure if it’s worth arguing with Darrell, but:
Look, the whole point of the secret program was to avoid the need to get FISA court orders. So there was no judicial review. And Congress didn’t “review” anything — a handful of members were briefed and then forced to stay mum. And there is no such thing as an “independent” member of the executive branch. By definition, that’s not “external oversight.” Those people work at the pleasure of the President, and are not a genuine check on his power.
Doctor Gonzo
1993 World Trade Center bombings, maybe?
Darrell
Bush is not using that intel as ‘evidence’ for a legal prosecution, he is using it to hunt terrorists. What in the hell are you talking about?
Mike S
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Darrell actually seemed to come into the discussion quite tamely making his point without much vitriol. It was only his subsequent posts that got a little heated due to frustration, something that every single one of us can be rightly accused of.
ppGaz
Darrell, is there any reason why Bush wouldn’t just get the law changed, rather than create this mess by ignoring the law? Surely if 72 hours is not enough time, he can get it changed to any number of hours he wants, right?
He got the draconian Patriot Act passed initially without a whimper of opposition. Why would he go all Nixon over a thing like a 72-hour limit?
jg
I never once mentioned anything about prosecuting foreigners. Please learn to read.
Darrell
That is precisely the issue here. If you have no problem with NSA intercepting foreign communication all the time, and they do so without warrants, then what is the big deal in intercepting foreign communication when suspected terrorists are talking to someone in the US? That is the very crux of the issue. How, if you have no problem with intercept of foreign communication, do you deal with foreign communication going to and from the US?
ppGaz
Maybe he’s frustrated that nobody is listening to him.
Maybe his insistence that 72 hours, under FISA, is not enough time to get approval for wiretaps.
Why doesn’t he explain why 3-4 years wasn’t enough time to GET THE LAW CHANGED so that it worked to protect Americans?
Do you think that if Darrell were reasonable, people might acutally listen to him? Seriously, I’m asking.
Andrei
Yes. Here’s the algorithm:
thisTask = 1 normal task;
someTasks = 3 small tasks;
oneDay = 6 hours; // I find in my normal day, I only work for about 6 hours total, not including busywork.
normalLoad = ( thisTask * oneDay )/6 || ( someTasks * oneDay )/6;
toughLoad = ( thisTask * oneDay )/3 || ( someTasks * oneDay )/3;
shitLoad = ( thisTask * oneDay ) || ( someTasks * oneDay );
fuckton = shitLoad * 3;
Obviously, everything works in divisbles of threes.
PotVsKtl
FISA.
ppGaz
But Darrell, the “crux” seems to change depending on which point you are making at the moment.
You’ve made the “72 hours isn’t enough time” argument over and over again in recent days, including here.
Why isn’t it enough time, Darrell? And why isn’t 3-4 years enough time to GET THAT TIME LIMIT CHANGED so that it is big enough?
Why don’t you want to answer this question, Darrell?
Doctor Gonzo
Bill of Rights. Fourth Amendment. It’s very clear on this. People in the U.S. can’t be spied upon without a warrant. This isn’t hard to understand. It’s not a big deal with the NSA intercepts Mikhail in Russia talking to Omar in Afghanistan; neither of those people are covered by the Fourth Amendment. When we are talking about people in the U.S., constitutional protections apply. See, unlike the president, I don’t think the Constitution is just a “goddamn piece of paper.”
Darrell
Do you think all, or most non-American terrorists now should be given the same rights and protections of a US citizen in a criminal trial proceeding?
ppGaz
What you say can, and will, be used against you later, Darrell.
By the way, have you come up with an answer to my question yet? You claim, over and over again, that Bush couldn’t get the paperwork done in the 72 hours allotted under FISA.
So he ignored the law. Why would he do that, instead of working to CHANGE THE LAW so that it protected Americans better? Wasn’t 3-4 years enough time for him to do this?
jg
Because if there is no oversight ( a concept seemingly far beyond your graps) how do you know they are listening to suspected terrorists communication with someone in the US? How do we know who they’re listening too?
Take the issue out of the context of the war on terro and think about it. Very much open to corruption. Thats the issue.
Pb
The Other Steve,
Don’t worry yourself, that’s a bald-faced lie in the first place. I mean, unless the George W. Bush who significantly increased the deficit in his first term is somehow not the same person as the George W. Bush who’s planning to “significantly reduce” the deficit less.
But ignoring that bit of shillery, also don’t forget to add in all the other economic weasel words, like “as a percentage of GDP”.
Andrei
My bad… should read:
someTasks = thisTask / 3;
I always forget to optimize my code for maximum flexiblity. Sigh.
ppGaz
Do you think that a president should repeatedly ignore a law that, according to you, has an unreasonable time restriction built into it …. or should he get that law changed so that the time limit is adequate to get the job done?
Why didn’t Bush do that, Darrell?
Doctor Gonzo
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but yes, I believe in due process. I believe in innocent until proven guilty. I believe that the government should play by the rules. We do this for the benefit of the innocent, not the guilty. That’s what it takes.
If we want to appear like China to the world in terms of human rights, then we can dispose of all those due process niceties and just convict and imprison people based on secret evidence with no oversight. But I don’t want to live in China, thank you.
Darrell
I disagree. The President has the power to monitor foreign enemies. If those enemies are in correspondence with US citizens, this is a grey area of executive power. Bush reasonably interpreted the law to enable him to monitor and wiretap foreign correspondence between a foreigner and a US citizen without warrant, and the US citizen is protected because if there is no warrant, non of that info can be used against them. Fascist Bush, right?
ppGaz
The president has a lot of power, Darrell. But apparently, not enough power to get a simple change made to a law that doesn’t give him enough time do get the approvals he needs.
Why not, Darrell? Why hasn’t Bush had the power to make that simple change?
Mike S
I think that is the important question that still has not been answered other than Gonzo saying that they were told that the Senate wouldn’t pass it. That is also something that leads me to believe that there is more to this than meets the eye. Especially since the time when this began anything and everything was passing with even the slightest refrence to national security.
Darrell
Do you think maybe it might have had something to do with your analogy of the Bush administration being lying junkies?
Pb
You call that “protected”? He’s not protected from having Bush spy on him, apparently. What’s worse is that you think that is at all reasonable.
Does anyone else get the irony here, where the most secretive administration of our time wants to be able to pry into everyone else’s affairs, without being required to divulge their own? Apparently they never heard or believed all that stuff about a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”…
simon
Too many comments to read through, but if it hasn’t been posted, that link you posted to protein wisdom has been debunked. Just like every other bs excuse these people have come up with in the last week. Just like the junkies they support, you shouldn’t really believe the junky defenders anymore.
Mike S
When this was happening, 2002 right(?), the only people who seemed to know he was a “lying junky” were those of us on the left.
Darrell
Should we have set up criminal courts with pro-bono lawyers to try the 100’s of thousands of POW’s in WWII? Vietnam? What you are suggesting is a huge leap – giving US citizen criminal rights to non-US terrorists fighting out of uniform violating laws of war. You’re welcome to try and make that case, but you’re not standing on solid legal ground.
And by not granting US citizen priveleges on non-American terrorist scum does NOT make us like China as you suggest
Darrell
Hasn’t been debunked in the least, no matter what TP and Dkos tell you to think
ppGaz
Well, let’s stipulate for this exchange that they are not lying junkies. Why, then, would a president, faced with a 72-hour time limit that you claim is not sufficient to “do paperwork,” ignore the law … for years … rather than work to change that law?
When he leaves office, do we expect him to leave behind a list of defective laws so that the next president can ignore those, too? I thought the Republicans ran the government …. why can’t they fix this law?
SeesThroughIt
Well, he wouldn’t monitor the press because he doesn’t need to. He can just pay them to say what he wants. (Paging Armstrong Williams)
It is true that the Clinton surplus was overstated, but he did create a surplus, which Bush quickly turned into the largest defecit in history. And his tax-cut agenda is only making things worse. Much, much worse: Is America Going Broke (the section titled “How Big Is the Problem?” is particularly good.) Similarly, we have Almost Unnoticed, Bipartisan Budget Anxiety where liberal and conservative economists alike (including right-wing favorites The Heritage Foundation) agree that the current US economic direction is hastening disaster and that a mix of both spending cuts and tax increases will be needed to fix things as just doing one or the other won’t work.
But all that is way different from what the topic of this thread is. Excellent post, by the way, John.
Darrell
As does the former assistant AG under Bill Clinton and many others. I see little honest disagreement from those who are informed as to the reasonableness of Bush’s actions.. the only thing to debate as far as I can see is whether or not Bush’s reasonable interpretation overstretched his constituional powers. Our founding fathers set up a strong executive branch on powers involving national security. That seems to rankle the feathers of those who want to selectively cite the constitution
Darrell
Bush does not have to obtain warrants, 72 hours limits or otherwise, when monitoring suspected foreign enemies. The complication enters when suspected foreign enemies correspond with US citizens. I believe Bush has constitutional authority which trumps congress on this trivial (IMO) interpretation. We have a Select Intelligence Committee whose purpose is to review top secret programs and procedures.
Davebo
Err.. Perhaps because he’s a mindless partisan hack who would swallow a freaking flag poll with no gag reflex in defense of Bush???
But then it’s not like we haven’t tried to explain that to you before right?
And just consider for a second, how Jeff, your alleged friend, reacts when you call it like it is. Then remember that thought as you berate folks for posting comments on Jeff’s little shithouse wall.
Darrell
ppg, Bush did not ‘ignore’ the law for years. He first sought and obtained NSA judicial and AG approval as required by law BEFORE moving forward. He also set up bi-partisan congressional oversight. You can argue that’s not enough oversight, but you can’t say that he ‘ignored’ the law on this issue
Pb
John Cole,
To be fair, you *are* talking smack. Heroin, that is. I hope that was intentional on your part. :)
Mike S
Oversight implies that they had a say in what was happening. Instead they were required to keep absolutely silent about it.
Anderson
Wow, Goldstein’s a bigger doofus than I’d realized.
Darrell
“Calling it like it is”, saying the Bush admin is lying like crack junkies is putting it out there, don’t you think? Of course JC can do or say on his blog as he pleases, and he advances some good arguments. But is it really so surprising that such inflamatory rhetoric would get a reaction any more than when I refer to lefties as ‘kooks’? puh-leaze
tbrosz
So Bush says something, and the usual anonymous “current and former intelligence officials” surface, throw unprovable statements on the table, and submerge again. Of course, their version is assumed to be accurate.
Frankly, I’ve had “anonymous sources” up to my eyeballs.
I think if we went through the past few months of news exposes and were able to put actual names to these “current and former officials,” we’d know a lot more about what’s going on. For all we know, the same two or more people could be the sources for almost all of these stories.
Davebo
The difference Darrell is that everyone expects you to be an idiot and no one would even consider taking any of your rants here seriously.
And for months now Jeff has been almost a caricature of you.
jg
Thats the reason. It wouldn’t pass.
Your son steals your car because if he asked to borrow it you’d say no. If he did it in the name of protecting americans Darrell would be OK with it.
Andrei
Whoa! He did? That seems to be news to those involved.
Davebo
Well, with a stroke of a pen Bush could produce some of those redacted reclassified documents and prove that this story is false.
I wouldn’t hold your breath if I was you.
ppGaz
Those are your words, Darrell, are they not?
If that time is not enough, why wouldn’t the president get the law changed so that there IS enough time?
Don’t play word games, Darrell. If the 72 hours is a defense, then why isn’t the law simply changed? If it’s not relevant, then why do you keep bringing it up?
and ..
Did you say this? ARe we basing our defense of the war now on FRENCH INTELLIGENCE?
Perry Como
And our tactics on Clinton and Carter.
jg
Wow. You got thrown under the bus fast. Stray just a little bit from the message and goodbye.
jaime
I notice that Darrell and Tall Dave and their ilk aren’t answering this question so I’ll repeat it over and over util they quit pretending the question was never asked.
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
KC
Ah, another tough Republican, turning to that infantile, weak, emasculatory, FRENCH INTELLIGENCE for cover.
jg
They don’t answer questions they can’t weasle a talking point out of. Sometimes they even invent an issue in order to deflect attention from a losing battle.
‘Why don’t you lefties get all bothered about the guy who leaked this like you did with Plame’ is a repeatable out for them.
Darrell
Davebo, how did a reasonably intelligent guy like you become such a whackjob? were you molested as a child?
jaime
DARRELL…
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
Darrell
And it demonstrates the hypocrisy on the left that a far more damaging leak should be dismissed or ignored, no?
Davebo
Look on the bright side John. You’ve been accused of hyperbole by Jeff Goldstein.
Sort of like having Mr. T chastize you for over accesorizing!
;0)
simon
Wrong Darrell. It was debunked, and I’m not the one who gets told what to think. Every attempted excuse hinges on blatantly ignoring the difference between spying on foreigners versus spying on US citizens, which is what FISA explicitly outlines. It’s obvious that the Bush admin hasn’t seized on any of these weak excuses because they know they’re bunk.
PotVsKtl
It’s already been explained to you that the leak is not damaging. Your refusal to use logic and behave in a rational manner does not change reality.
tbrosz
The whole point is that papers like the L.A. Times know damn well that isn’t likely to happen. That the facts cannot be fully known, and the accusers are anonymous, plays right into the political attacks.
As as aside, the famous “August Memo” was in fact eventually declassified, and turned out to say something quite different than what earlier news stories had implied. Remember how the Left complained that the declassification was done for “political reasons?”
Darrell
Change the law to what? 5 days, when it may take a month to prepare the application? More importantly, it is beyond dispute that the Bush administration has the power to monitor foreign enemies WITHOUT WARRANT. This executive order logically extends those powers to monitoring those same foreign terrorists without warrant when they communicate with the US. What is so difficult to understand about that?
jaime
DARRELL…
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
“Why couldn’t Bush Change the Law?”
Jeebus you people are thickheaded.
Darrell
Where was that “explained”?
Mike S
Sorry Darrell but I find that rediculous. There is a very real possibility that the President and his administration have broken the law and defied the constitution, something they took an oath to protect. There is a real chance that they spied on Americans and until proven otherwise I suspect that it was not all about terrorist ties. As I explained upthread my reasoning for thinking that is the DOD and FBI spying that has broken in the last few weeks.
Darrell
jaime you obsessive whackjob, can you read?
Lines
Yeah, “bin Laden Determined to Strike Within The US” isn’t what it really said.
tbrosz, don’t be ignorant. The title of the memo was enough. Knowing about Able Danger is the nail in that coffin. The Bushistas dropped the ball on 9/11. Are you going to refute that like a Darrell?
Pb
Darrell,
The part where it violated the Fourth Amendment. Pay attention, geez.
jaime
For a conservative, you have horrible deflect and distract skills. The order extends those powers without restraint or oversight. Now why would he want to do that, especially after goin before the American people and telling us to our faces all wiretaps are done with warrants?
jg
Nothing. The facts been stipulated many times though you keep coming back to it like it some kind of ‘win’ for you.
The issue though is that the warrant you say he doesn’t need to spy on foreigners is not put in place to stop him from spying on foreigners. Its to provide oversight so that he will ONLY spy on foreigners. Without oversight, which is the part of th eprocess he should’ve gone to congress to get changed rather than circumvent, we don’t know who he’s spying on.
Get it yet?
Before Bush, presidents complied with this law and we knew who they peeked in on. Bush doesn’t want to have to tell us. If its just terrorists, why not tell us? Why not submit the proof you had that lead you to need to tap a line connected to a US citizen? Because nothing actionable concerning the US citizen was found Darrell thinks its OK for Bush not to submit a warrant app?
Mike S
From the LA Times article.
Mike S
JOHN COLE. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FIX THE LINK AND MARGINS.
Darrell
For a leftist you are typically ignorant. Far from “without restraint or oversight”, there was judicial review and oversight from NSA, FISA and the AG, as well as bi-partisan congressional oversight. But keep those fingers stuck in your ears as those facts regarding oversight of Bush’s program have only been repeated a gazillion times. and it is a fact
jg
Why are you the only person who thinks that? can you show me where there was all this oversight?
Mike S
No there wasn’t. “I’m doing this and keep your mouth shut” is not oversight.
Davebo
Well, I certainly can’t devise a scenario in which declassifying enough information on that particular investigation to rebuke the claim would jeapordize security.
Can you?
Darrell
jg, explain for us the technology or method that would enable our intelligence agencies to only monitor the foreign terrorist part of the communication during a conversation with an American
PotVsKtl
Please elaborate on how suspects knowing they are being monitored without a warrant as opposed to with one is damaging.
Please elaborate on how suspects knowing we are monitoring them and then not applying for a warrant as opposed to monitoring them and then applying for a warrant 72 hours later is damaging.
ppGaz
Answer the question, Darrell. It’s your defense, your claim that the 72 hour window for approval wasn’t enough time. Your words.
So why hasn’t the law been changed? Why has Bush chosen to circumvent the law rather than change it? If the law is not working to protect Americans, then whose responsibility is it to fix that law? Bush has been president for five years. Has he not had enough time to fix the law?
Perry Como
jaime Says:
He doesn’t need to. His Constitutional powers trump Congress.
Darrell Says:
Listen to the calls going to DNC headquarters.
simon
Don’t be an idiot. Bush himself explained on about 10 different occasions over the past 3 years that we were tapping every possible communication method. Is he guilty of national security damaging leaks? And what PotVsKtl said. The tricks you use to convince other dimwits don’t work here.
John Cole
Mike S.- Is that better?
john
jg
Same thing they’ve been using. And like they’ve been doing if it involves an american FISA gets involved. To protect any american getting spied on. But they’re only protected because whoever listened in had to go tell someone they listened in. Bush no likey that last part.
Darrell
For one thing, the leak made it clear that the US was acting on this intelligence, using it to aggressively hunt terrorists. Most terrorists probably suspected as much, but many think we are weak and hamstrung by laws to do anything. This leak made it clear we were taking action. Also, the leak mentioned specifially an Iranian doctor (and others?) in the south who had allegedly had contacts with AQ. Did it occur to you that AQ will probably not be using any Iranian docs in the south for communication now?
Now explain for me again why the Plame non-leak was so serious but this leak of classified info is no big deal? Double standards and hypocrisy plain and simple.
Mike S
Thanks John.
jg
I don’t hink there’s a terrorist in the world who thinks he can hide behind US laws. That argument is bunk. Ask Padilla.
Darrell
especially with such a sophisticated dimwit such as yourself
simon
Still not answering basic quesitons…
jaime
According to the King his powers came from the authorization to use force in Afghanistan. That doesn’t cut it.
Darrell
It has to be an american communicating overseas with a suspected terrorist. If any dirt comes out on the American during such monitoring, too bad, can’t be used against them. What a draconian fascist law, huh?
ppGaz
Yes, in Bushworld, Congress and the courts are just impediments to government.
Mike S
link
Darrell
Actually, on interpretation of this particular national security issue I believe it does
jaime
Plame and “Clinton did it” in the same thread. You lose.
ppGaz
Why are you still posting, without answering the question?
Why are you putting up a “72 hours is not enough time” defense, when you can’t explain why such a limitation could not have been long ago fixed, thereby solving the problem?
Is the 72 hour limit an issue, or not? If not, why did you keep bringing it up? If so, why isn’t it fixed?
Darrell
Where did I mention Clinton’s name? Please show me. you’re not too bright are you jaime?
Darrell
Been answered. Repeatedly
jaime
5:01 PM ASSHOLE!
Darrell
Mike S, from the article you linked
I guess no one informed the author that if no warrant is issued, no information can be “collected” on American citizens as the writer suggests. Sort of blows away the entire thesis, wouldn’t you agree?
ppGaz
No, it has not been answered, you lying sack of shit.
If the 72-hour limit is a defense, then why has the law not been fixed?
If it isn’t an issue, then why have you kept bringing it up?
jaime
No information can “legally” be collected, Darrell. The quotes are on the wrong word.
Darrell
I see, referring to Clinton’s AG = what you wrote here:
No where did I write or suggest that “clinton did it”, but blather on you drooling moron
Darrell
Evidence of widespread illegal information collected under the President’s program jaime? No?
Perry Como
The President is not a King, he is a duly elected representative of the American people. As such He is granted certain authority, much of which expands in a time of war. The President has the powers of the Executive to wage war on foreign enemies that threaten the United States. Neither Congress nor the Judiciary have authority to determine how He wages war. Congress can decide to not fund the war effort if they disagree. Since Congress continues to support the President through monetary measures, their support is implicit as well as explicit (as seen through failed resolutions offering the cut and run option).
mike s not mike s
Oh, it feels good to see clearly doesn’t it. If Clinton did half the things Bush has you have to admit that we would have been well into impeachment proceedings. As you so aptly pointed out, Bush, quite simply, doesn’t know how to tell the truth. Everything is spin. Bush is a man of little substance and character. He’s an actor playing the part of the president.
jaime
Oh…so saying Clinton’s guy thinks its cool, is in no way the same thing as Clinton did it.
Such a tough guy from behind a thousand miles of wires. Is this where you act out your tough guy fantasies. You can’t call people idiots and morons to there faces or they’ll pimp slap you, so you let it out online as part of the Keyboard Commandos.
DougJ
Is Jeff Goldstein on the up and up? Are you sure he’s not just a blog version of me? A lot of what he says he seems to be saying for effect. I’m really not kidding here. I think his site may be some kind of a big joke.
jaime
Since people like you don’t want your king to even have to look for evidence, we may never know.
Blue Neponset
You have stuck up for him many times yet he doesn’t hesitate to call you disingenuous, IMO, he is acting like an asshole.
Mike S
I’m tired of arguing. My personal view is that this issue is about my civil rights being tossed over the side. Some people disagree with that view and others are willing to let that happen, as indicated by the brilliant Sen Coryn and his idiot comment about rights not mattering when you’re dead. That fool couldn’t even clean up after the founding fathers horses.
This country has survived a lot of shit without destroying the constitution. Right now fear is being used as a club to get people to accept some serious shit.
I’m not afraid. I live in a city that is no doubt a target. I’m 20 minutes from Hollywood, 30 minutes from San Pedro which is a major port, 10 minutes from LAX, my wife managed the CNN tower where she had a bomb threat at least twice a month.
I have traveled extencively including riding the UK’s underground and drank heavily at the Sari Club on Bali which blew up just a few years ago.
If I can live without fear then it should be pretty easy for people living in fly over country where the prospects of bein attacked are about as inevitable as my getting into bed with Jessica Simpson.
Darrell
oohh jaime, I dig it when you do your cyber tough guy routine from mom’s basement. It gives me goose bumps. Are you pumping iron right now big boy?
Darrell
With all due respect Mike, you really haven’t made much of an argument that Bush’s executive order = ‘tossing our civil rights over the side’.
jaime
Parroting my calling you out is not especially clever. It’s kind of sad, actually.
I see you’re still being and p-ssy and avoiding ppGaz’s question.
Mike S
That’s the problem. The oversight on this consisted of people that agreed with the Pres. doing this. We have no independant oversight. The fact that members of the NSA felt the need to blow the wistle on it seems to indicate that they were very uncomfortable with the program. If there is a real investigation, as opposed to a roberts whitewash, we may get more information.
But I am not prepared to stipulate to that just because the President and his surrogates say so.
Darrell
yeah Jaime, you’re really “calling me out”, aren’t you? Pistols at dawn?
Robert Chavez
Just a quick input; a warrant application does not “take a month” to procure. Used to work in an AG’s office. We could get warrants an hour after we needed them, with just one person working on them. Even given the complexity of putting together a terrorism warrant application, it removes any credibility to state that a warrant app could take a month or more to produce.
Secondly, not intending to prosecute does not remove 4th amendment obligations. If that were the case, police could terrorize citizens with unconstitutional raids, as long as they “weren’t intending to prosecute”. If you knowingly violate the 4th amendment and the law, even if you’re not intending to prosecute, you’re committing a civil rights violation.
Not intending to use the evidence gathered is in no way a salve to a rights violation.
Darrell
But you are prepared to assert the worst without evidence arent’ you? Bi-partisan congressional oversight, judicial reviews. This is about as deep as it usually gets in classified programs like this. If Bush has the power to monitor foreign enemies without warrant, it’s entirely reasonable that he should be able to monitor these same foreign terrorists when they communicate back and forth with the US.
Mike S
I guess that if we ignore the 4th amendment than you have a point.
I’m looking forward to the hew and cry when Pres. Hillary thows out the second on the same basis.
jaime
Never mind Darrell. Isn’t there a national guard unit where you can enlist with all that aggression you have? Calling people you don’t know idiots and morons won’t fly there either.
Oh, and you still haven’t answered ppGaz’s question.
Mike S
No matter how many times you use that it is simply not true that “I’m doing this and you can’t say a word about it” is just not oversight.
Darrell
A more apt analogy would be a neighbor standing on the fence line to overhear conversations from a house with suspected criminals. ‘Terrorizing with raids’ is a false comparison on just about every level
Darrell
Source
jaime
Where the hell do you keep getting this idea from? What Pat Roberts pull his mouth from King George’s johnson long enough to say “fine by me” is oversight to you? Or Bush telling Rockerfeller “I’m doing it, so shut up”.
Screw the Constitution, Bush might want to study the Magna Carta first.
Mike S
Jeebus. I mangled that one.
PotVsKtl
Not going o address the rest of his post, are you? You have zero ability to participate in a debate.
Darrell
Listen you dishonest little prick, you called me an “Asshole” and I responded. Can you imagine that?
Darrell
Can you read?
Mike S
So how was it addressed? By ignoring the process all together.
jaime
That’s Darrell’s MO. He takes a post creates a strawman to knockdown and then ignores what he can’t deflect with a talking point.
Darrell
So Bush should just wait for them to solve these bottlenecks, especially regarding monitoring foreign terrorists where he doesn’t need warrants in the first place?
Juan Gewanfri
The FISA court approved 99.99% of wiretap requests presented to it. If there were exigent circumstances the NSA could wiretap first and get approval within 72 hours.
Why wouldn’t the Bush administration use a legal system that was basically a rubber stamp to evesdrop on any communication between a suspected terrorist and U.S. citizen?
There claim that they didn’t have to obey the law because of some presidential right eminating from the penumbra of some executive power clause in the constitution is just plain silly.
Maybe they weren’t trying to spy on suspected terrorists. Who else might they want to spy on? Maybe their affidavit would cause a FISA judge’s jaw to drop. Maybe they were spying on war protesters, political opponents, Quakers, critical journalists, the Kerry campaign, etc.
Before you call me a crazy moonbat conspiracy theorist, can you think of a more rational explanation? They didn’t feel like doing the paperwork maybe.
jaime
#1 These “bottlenecks” seem like trumped up excuses to skirt the law.
#2 These “bottlenecks” could have been resolved, even in relative secret (The Senate holds secret sessions all the time). Why then did he choose to skirt the law, not address the problem, and lie to the American people about it?
That’s ppGaz’s question that you keep ignoring Darrell. But, of course you knew that.
Darrell
What about when the application takes more than 72 hours. See cited article above. Also, the President has always had the authority to monitor foreign enemies without warrant. Also, see what Echelon has been doing for decades
jaime
But not American citizens…and not through warrantless NSA wiretaps.
Mike S
I gotta go but I want to point something out. Darrell and I have had big fights in the past but have been rationally discussing this in this thread. We are talking past each other on some points but that is normal when agreement is not attainable. To be honest I attribute this rationality to my being too tired to get frustrated enough to snap at him so he has nothing to retalliate against with a vitriolic response.
Personally, I appreciate the way he has responded to my points regardless of the fact that I think he’s dead wrong on the issue.
Darrell
Oh, well if they “seem” to be like that, your “feelings” must be true, right?
How long would it take to “resolve” those bottlenecks? And it’s highly questionable why in the first place a President needs warrants to monitor foreign terrorists.
Darrell
Likewise Mike. I’m off to the gym myself.. to work off some of that aggression jaime keeps talking about
Slide
What an embarrassing post John. Wow. This was particularly appalling:
The statutes are really not all that complicated. Please show me a “security expert” that claims that bush followed the FISA law. There is just about universal agreement that Bush went around the FISA statutes (sorry Al Maviva). The administration is not even claiming that. Not even Victoria Toensing is saying that. What they ARE saying is 1)the president can do whatever he wants DESPITE the statutes or 2) breaking the law is better than a terrorist attack or 3) when Congress authorized him to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that someone gave him the ok to tap the phone of guy in Duluth.
Your seeming disinterest and apathy is very revealing. Oh, thats right, Cindy Sheehan is not somehow involved to get your juices going. Pathetic.
jaime
I think the problem is Darrell loves his king. The king can do no wrong to Darrell even when he lies. He lied last year about all wire taps being done with court order even when he knew that wasn’t true. You see whenever the king says things like “Mission Accomplished” and “We won’t be proven wrong” I tend not to trust that, but like a battered housewife, Darrell thinks he lies and cheats and beats us because he loves us.
There used to be a time when efficient accountable government was a Republican priority, but now Darrell has got the king he wants so that’s out the window.
Paul Wartenberg
Many of the “bottlenecks” being tossed about do not relate to the ability to establish wiretaps: most “bottlenecks” we know of occur with old-fashioned bureaucratic slowness (higher-ups not following up on recommendations or warnings, for example, or interdepartmental debates on assigning authority/potential blame).
And how long does it take to file a request for a warrant? Is there like 145 typed pages that are needed? You’d think there was a simple 1-page fill-out form by now (“Item 4a. Will this wiretap require analog or digital recording? ___ Analog _x_ Digital”). I mean, can it really take longer than 72 hours? If so, if that was an unreasonable burden, why didn’t Bush go to Congress in a closed session and ask for a longer approval time?
Slide
Last time I looked, both the Department of Justice and the FBI are in the Executive Branch. If there was a bottleneck and American lives were at risk, why didn’t they “move heaven and earth” to fix it? oh…. because they are criminals and just ignored the law.
jaime
Try not to call anyone with a Bush sucks bumpersticker a moron or idiot and you’ll be fine.
Slide
Digby says it best
.
jaime
And while you’re at the gym Darrell, maybe you can come up with the answer to ppGaz’s question you’ve been pretending you;ve answered.
Brian
I had to take a day off from this debate, not that I was missed.
But, on another note, I just wrote a frind an email and found myself using this acronym:
TWAT (The War Against Terror)
I’d like to see the nightly news put that acronym superimposed over a senator’s face, then in a graphic box over the anchor’s shoulder while talking about terrorism with a straight face.
Perry Como
I wonder if Mr. Cole ever bangs his head on the keyboard after reading through the comments on his site?
jg
Without oversight, how will anyone know it is what it ‘has’ to be? According to you Bush doesn’t have to go get a warrant so how does anyone know the program is only be used in the way it was intended?
Onthe rare occasion it takes longer they can do something then.
The issue is Bush is going around Echelon. Avoiding the oversight built into Echelon. If he’s just doing what every other president has done why the need to go around Echelon?
Oh and ppGaz has a question you’ve been avoiding and then thnking you answered but really you just misread the question, and then avoiding again.
Perry Como
NSA judges are overseeing it.
Brian
Funny, I’ve wondered the same thing. I’d bet that by now he rolls his eyes and moves on. We’re not HIS kids, even though we play on his playground.
jg
Don’t forget Poland.
Perry Como
Finally, someone else caught it…
patience
John Cole:You hit the key question underlying all current defences
“Why can this gang not shoot straight? Why can they not tell the truth? Why?”
It’s not just once or twice. It’s on everything. Either they are inherently dishonest and sloppy, in which case they are unworthy of the responsiblities of their position, or they are cleverly dishonest intending to conceal wrongdoings. Either way this is a lose lose situation for the president.
Worse for all of us if its the very clever dishonesty. Consider the Carter/Clinton set the president meme in which select pieces of executive orders are quoted to give a false impression. Some group somewhere is playing within fire deep within the bowels of the Bush defence spin machine. If they keep this up, they will find themselves at the end of a very unfriendly public investigation.
Note to people like Jeff over at protein wisdom: Your inability to address these lies is starting to give the impression that you are part of the problem, rather than an honest broker. Jeff, your dissmissive tone to John and your intentional deafness to the serious realities invovled here is hurting your reputation as a credible pundit.
Pooh
If they are prosecuted in the United States for crimes committed in the U.S., yes. And you should too. And then we can swiftly and fairly convict them and get together hang them in Times Square.
But some people want to eat their desserts before they finish their veggies…
shingles
One of the funnier comments over there at PT:
Yeah, John’s just in it for the money.
Though he’s right on regarding the scummier elements.
John S.
Heh. You have no idea…
Zifnab
I’m just shocked by the post count. 200+ posts in less than a day seems a bit higher than ususal. I’d be surprised if he can pick through it all.
That said, …
I think Slide hit the nail on the head. This is purely a problem of Presidential accountability. Where, exactly, does Presidential power end?
It seems the reason that Bush can lie and lie and lie again is because there are no serious reprecussions. Oh nosss! His poll numbers are low! Oh nosss! He can’t pull a Terri Shavio every couple months! Oh nosss! He’s incurred the wrath of Democrats!
Please. If angry Democrats was the worst I’d have to worry about after I waged war for no good reason, illegally tapped a bunch of phonelines, and ran around backing Intelligent Design and Gay Bashing as rational political platforms, I’d be just as cavalier about the truth as Bush is right now.
What’s Congress going to do? Impeach him? Ha! They’ll probably try to award him a Medal of some sort first.
Bush Lies, People Die (or get wiretapped) and that’s about it. No accountability.
Stevo
Wow! You believe what the Times calls news? Is there anything in the dog trainer that is not an opinion?
John Cole has today admitted to being the most naive person on the continent. Gratz!
SoCalJustice
Alternate title for this thread: “Althouse’s Wet Dream.”
The Disenfranchised Voter
Fuck the Naysayers (your detractors), John. I don’t think Bush is a bad guy either, I do however think he is completely wrong about his power as a President and is willing to lie to futher his cause.
His comments and actions lead me to believe that he thinks the President is not bound by the Constitution in times of war. That is not only wrong, it is dangerous.
To be honest, I don’t even have much of a problem with the NSA spying on American citizens. That is a compromise I am willing to make.
However, a concession I am not willing to make is warrantless spying on American citizens. I heard a Senator today say that if people disagree with Bush’s program they should pass a Constitutional Amendment to change it. Ironically, this “Senator” seems to have forgotten that we already have an amendment doing just that. It is called the 4th Amendment:
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.
DougJ
While we trogdolytes are foolishly questioning the wisdom of the Commander-in-Chief, there’s a really high-brow post chez Goldstein:
Steve S
Yum. I like lamb. If you’re ever in Windsor, there’s a nice Thai restaurant on High Street that makes an awesome massman curry. Also over on High Street in Eton, just on the other side of Windsor across the Thames bridge there is an exceptional Indian restaurant. Try the Lamb Biryani.
Apparently Jeff “Sharpton” Goldstein thinks John Cole should always shill for the Bush administration. Any period of non-shilling is considered treason to the cause.
Just like a good little Bolshevik.
Patty from Chicago
I’ve read halfway through all the posts here and since at the point I stopped, all of you seem to be arguing over whether or not 72 hours is enough time to get paperwork together for a warrant under the FISA law.
I was listening to Joe Biden (who was in Congress when the FISA law was written, don’t know if he was in the Senate yet) on Hardball tonight, and he clarified that, they wrote an exception in the FISA law, that the government has 15 days to apply for the warrant, after a declaration of war. Biden said that the Congressional authorization to use force in Iraq qualifies under that exception.
I did a quick google search on FISA and “15 days” and this link from Loyola was the top hit:
Loyola FISA summary
Thoughts now?
Slide
BTW…. are we at war? Isn’t Congress the only entity that can declare war? Have they? So just saying we are at war by the President gives him certain war powers? Wow. Pretty fuckin convenient. Does the “war” on drugs count? How about the “war” on Christmas? “War” on obesity?
Listen, to all my little scared right wing friends, why don’t you all just crown the little chimp king and get it done with already.
Demdude
Slide:
Sen. Biden said that the act congress passed counts as war and gives the President the 15 days.
I agree Bush is full of crap and with 15 days to obtain a warrant, his argument for not doing it is even more lame.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Slide, though I agree with you that we haven’t officially been at war since WW2, but that is really irrelevant to this argument.
There is no need to argue that. The FISA Law says that if the US is at war then Bush has a whole 15 days to get the warrant. Bush says if he is at war he shouldnt and doesnt need a warrant at all. Argue that issue. Forget about getting into a debate whether we are at war or not.
You need to choose your battles wisely.
Bruce Moomaw
Let us pause briefly for a few words from George Will:
“The president’s authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute’s clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?…
“Perhaps [Bush’s still-classified justifying legal] brief argues, as its author, John Yoo… argued 14 days after Sept. 11, 2001, in a memorandum on ‘the president’s constitutional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations supporting them,’ that the president’s constitutional power to take ‘military actions’ is ‘plenary.’ The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘plenary’ as ‘complete, entire, perfect, not deficient in any element or respect.’
“The brief should be declassified and debated, beginning with this question: Who decides which tactics — e.g., domestic surveillance — should be considered part of taking ‘military actions”?…
“In September 2001, the president surely had sound reasons for desiring the surveillance capabilities at issue. But did he have sound reasons for seizing them while giving only minimal information to, and having no formal complicity with, Congress? Perhaps. But Congress, if asked, almost certainly would have made such modifications of law as the president’s plans required. Courts, too, would have been compliant. After all, on Sept. 14, 2001, Congress had unanimously declared that ‘the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism,’ and it had authorized ‘all necessary and appropriate force’ against those involved in Sept. 11 or threatening future attacks…
“Particularly in time of war or the threat of it, government needs concentrated decisiveness — a capacity for swift and nimble action that legislatures normally cannot manage. But the inescapable corollary of this need is the danger of arbitrary power.”
Bang on, on every point. Why did he insist on ABSOLUTE power? Will ascribes this to “this administration’s almost metabolic urge to keep Congress unnecessarily distant and hence disgruntled.” I hope the motives weren’t more sinister than that. It’s possible that Bush is not “bad or evil” — although, at a minimum, he’s a morally and mentally lazy sponge — but we have every reason to believe that in these particular matters Cheney is giving him his marching orders; and I think Cheney IS a bad man, a power-hungry megalomaniac whom I would not trust with a burnt-out match.
demimondian
Slide — there is some technical question about whether or not the resolution that passed the Congress after 9/11 was a proper declaration of war, but there’s no doubt that Congress intended it as such. That is probably all that matters here.
I agree with TDV, though: pick your battles. 3 days isn’t enough? OK, but you had 15 days — you’re telling me that it was too hard to file 15 days retroactively? Isn’t the correct response to that to hire more people, then?
Paddy O'Shea
Pretty stunning result for the latest MSNBC Live Poll:
Should President Bush be impeached?
40,409 votes
88% Yes
12% (divided amongst 3 other categories)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904
Robert Chavez
Ummm…no. It’s not a false comparison. Under the 4th amendment, a search is a search is a search. A wiretap is treated exactly the same as a paramilitary group busting down your door and tearing apart your house. Both, if done warrantlessly and without exigent circumstances(i.e. known ticking-timebomb), are violations. The punishment might be different, but we’re not looking at consequences. We’re looking at whether or not a law is violated. So to compare severity is a straw man–sounds reasonable, but actually completely irrelevant to my main point–a warrantless search is still illegal, even if you don’t intend to use the information gathered therein to prosecute.
As for how a warrant is filed, most of the time there are standard forms that you fill out, and then you staple the proofs that establish probable cause to the form. In a complex case, such as these, it might take a while to get it through. With the resources I know the JD has…heck, that a state AG has, we’re talking a couple of days at most.
In exigent circumstances, judges will even legthen the time allotted, if they believe you’re acting in good faith.
To analyze this correctly, leave out all the fluff. A person, in order to stop a crime, conducted a warrantless search, on a person who is covered by the 4th amendment, and never attempted to retroactively legalize the search. It doesn’t matter who the person was, or what the circumstances. That’s the meat of the case. Don’t bring in all that useless information such as the status of the person, or the type of crime to be stopped.
ppGaz
I agree that Cheney is a lunatic. However, I am not as lenient on Bush as many people are. I think he really is as crazy, as mentally lazy, and as egotistical as this episode suggests. I think that he does things like this for exactly the same reason that Bill Clinton got a blowjob from an intern … because he could. That’s it, the entire reason. It’s Bush’s world, and we are just living in it.
John Cole has it exactly right: This guy doesn’t respect you. It’s all about him.
Bruce Moomaw
It’s touching that TallDave still has absolute religious faith that this particular president would never, ever abuse such unlimited power — and, moreover, that no future President ever would, too. But now let us quote another religious figure, since C.S. Lewis is a hot topic right now: “The greatest of all public dangers is the Committee of Public Safety” — by which, of course, he meant one with unlimited power.
Now for TallDave’s arguments on the famous aluminum tubes. As numerous writers have pointed out, including Fred Kaplan in the Nov 14 Slate:
“This is the crucial point: [Congress, contrary to Bush’s repeated claims] did not have ‘access to the same intelligence.’ The White House did send Congress a classified National Intelligence Estimate, at nearly 100 pages long, as well as a much shorter executive summary. It could have been (and no doubt was) predicted that very few lawmakers would take the time to read the whole document. The executive summary painted the findings in overly stark terms. And even the NIE did not cite the many dissenting views within the intelligence community. The most thorough legislators, for instance, were not aware until much later of the Energy Department’s doubts that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were designed for atomic centrifuges—or of the dissent about ‘mobile biological weapons labs’ from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research…
“…[N]early everyone thought Saddam was building WMDs, just as everyone back in the late ’50s thought Nikita Khrushchev was building hundreds of ICBMs. In Saddam’s case, many of us outsiders (I include myself among them) figured he’d had biological and chemical weapons before; producing such weapons isn’t rocket science; U.N. inspectors had been booted out of Iraq a few years earlier; why wouldn’t he have them now?
“What we didn’t know—and what the Democrats in Congress didn’t know either—was that many insiders did have reasons to conclude otherwise. There is also now much reason to believe that top officials — especially Vice President Dick Cheney and the undersecretaries surrounding Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon — worked hard to keep those conclusions trapped inside.”
Ditto from James Fallows (“Huffington Post”, Nov. 14):
“Everybody was not, in fact, working from the same misleading information. The administration’s line about WMD these days is: OK, we might have been wrong — but everybody was wrong, and everybody came to the same conclusion we did. The foreigners came to that conclusion through their intelligence services, and the Democrats (especially that weaselly Kerry and ambitious Hillary) did it when they voted for the war resolution.
“But at the time, Administration officials were most emphasically NOT saying ‘hey, we’re all operating in the dark here.’ The implied message of every briefing for reporters, every speech to the public, and every background session with legislators, was: If you knew what we knew, then you’d be as alarmed as we are. That was the message of Dick Cheney’s statement that ‘there can be no doubt’ that Iraq ‘now’ had weapons of mass destruction, of Condi Rice’s warning about the mushroom cloud, and of Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN. The argument over Iraq’s capabilities was by definition one-sided, because the Administration’s presumed insider knowledge trumped what anyone else could say. To pretend this was just a big widely-shared confusion is dishonest and wrong.
“[Also]…To say that Saddam Hussein might have been a threat is not to say that we had to invade when we did. The Administration had two responses when asked in 2003 ‘what’s the rush?’ about beginning the invasion. One was logistical: the troops were in place, they couldn’t wait forever, soon it would be hot (as if they would not be in Iraq thorugh many summers!). This obviously is a ‘Guns of August’ style of reasoning: the trains are moving toward the front, so we might as well start World War I.
“The other response was: we’ve waited 12 years, why wait any more? The answer to that was, first, that Iraq was now crawling with weapons inspectors, who at a minimum would make it hard for Saddam to cook up any surprise plans — and, second, that beginning a war could touch off a lot of messy complications left out of the optimistic war scenarios.”
And, when Sen. Feinstein asked the Congressional Research Service to check on whether Congress actually did the same intelligence as the White House, its conclusion in its Dec. 15 report was “in your dreams”. Knight-Ridder:
“The Congressional Research Service, by contrast, said: ‘The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president … have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods.’
“Unlike members of Congress, the president and his top officials also have the authority to ask U.S. intelligence agencies more extensively for follow-up information, the report said. ‘As a result, the president and his most senior advisers arguably are better positioned to assess the quality of the … intelligence more accurately than is Congress.’
“The CRS report identified nine key U.S. intelligence ‘products’ that aren’t generally shared with Congress. These include the President’s Daily Brief, a compilation of analyses that’s given only to the president and a handful of top aides, and a daily digest on terrorism-related matters.
“The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.”
At the same time that the White House is solemnly insisting that Congress got “the same intelligence” as it did, it is steadfastly refusing to let Congress see — even in secret session — the PDB, on the grounds that it includes much additional intelligence that must be kept secret from Congress. As Gary Farber says: what’s wrong with this picture?
Finally, it’s been pointed out with monotonous regularity that Bush’s most serious exaggerations involved Saddam’s supposed nuclear program, rather than his CBWs — which virtually everyone honestly believed he had (although even there we had the Curious Affair of the Germ Warfare Trailers), but which are also tremendously less dangerous than nukes. Kevin Drum provides a particular useful — and long — summary of the Administration’s specific forms of intelligence-rigging in his Nov. 14 blog. (And, as the CIA was aggrievedly predicting in October 2002, the Administration absolutely and totally fucked up — even well after the occupation — any attempt to keep Saddam’s minions from making off with the CBWs he WAS thought to have. As Brad delong keeps saying: thank God we WERE wrong on that one, or the consequences of Bush’s irresponsibility would have been far worse for us.)
Bruce Moomaw
Flash! Notorious pinko Jonah Goldberg agrees with me and George Will on this subject!
“From what we know, it sounds like the initial decision to be as aggressive as possible in rolling up al Qaeda was completely justified. Recall what it was like in the weeks and months after 9/11, when the death toll was still believed to be much higher than 3,000, anthrax was buzzing through the postal system, and an unknown number of sleeper cells existed on our soil….Speed was of the essence, and the system back then was not speedy.
“….There’s very little an American president can’t do when there’s an immediate crisis. But as it became clear this war was going to be a marathon instead of a sprint, Bush should have figured out how to reinsert the rule of law into the process.”
Kevin Drum: “I think that’s exactly right. With the caveat that we still don’t know exactly what this program entails, it appears to be just the kind of thing people have in mind when they say that the executive branch should be given a lot of leeway during wartime because only the executive can act speedily enough when the country is under attack.
” ‘Under attack’ describes 9/11, and the president had every reason to suppose that those attacks might continue. If Bush had ordered the NSA to broaden its mandate immediately, and then gone to Congress a few weeks or a month later to get permanent authorization for a change in the law, I’d probably have no problem with it.
“But that’s not what he did. In fact, he did just the opposite. He deliberately declined to ask the FISA court to authorize his program because he knew they’d turn him down. Likewise, he declined to ask Congress to authorize the program because after consulting with congressional leaders he concluded that Congress would turn him down too. But like it or not, once the initial emergency was past he no longer had the authority to act unilaterally. He’s our president, not our king, and even though he likes to style himself a ‘wartime president’ he still has to obey the law. Somebody ought to remind him of that occasionally.”
Yep. Yet again: why is he DEMANDING UNLIMITED power rather than merely EXPANDED power — such as, say, expanding the period during which the government can wiretap without a warrant to 5 days, or proposing some system that would allow data mining without giving the Administration total carte blanche to use everything such mining turns up for non-security purposes?
rachel
Wait…
“I am not convinced Bush has done anything wrong (and I mean in the legal sense),” and “If this latest piece in the LAT turns out to be true, I will be at that point. I simply will refuse to believe anything this administration says,” are “so hyperbolic as to beg credulity?”
Bzuuuh…? +boggles at teh stoooopid+
Bruce Moomaw
The “DEMANDING” in that last message shouldn’t have been capitalized. The perils of fast typing…
Bruce Moomaw
Add Jim Hoagland to the list in tonight’s Washington Post:
“Not even conservatives will rush to endorse the expansive powers that Bush claims to find in the Constitution to enable the National Security Agency to evade existing law and systematically conduct wiretaps against terrorism suspects on U.S. soil without warrants.
“Even weaker is the administration’s claim that Congress approved such wiretaps in its September 2001 resolution authorizing the use of force against terrorist organizations. Bush’s interpretation is a dangerous inflation of congressional intent. It smacks of the way Lyndon Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to bully Congress into supporting him on Vietnam. That is no path to follow.
“Bush’s initial response was unpersuasive on why he failed to ask Congress to fix defects in the warrant system mandated in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. For four years, Bush simply set aside the provisions of this law, which grew out of the abuses of the Vietnam-Watergate era…
“The kind of secrecy and obsessive concern about the powers of the presidency for their own sake that this administration showed even before Sept. 11, 2001, are inconsistent with the workings of American democracy, as well as with the fragmentation of power that marks the nation-state system today.”
But — once again — the key question is: WHY is Bush doing this? Simple mindless, cretinous arrogance (as George Will suggests), or something worse? The question these guys keep asking — why is he acting this way? — distinctly reminds me of that other plaintive plea we kept hearing during the early months of Watergate: why didn’t Nixon simply come clean on everything that was going on, and get the whole matter out of the way? Well. We know why, in that case.
jg
There’s a reason the founders put the legisltive branch powers in Article I and executive powers in Article II. MAking it clear who’s really in charge here.
tbrosz
Paddy:
All online internet polls are crap. No exceptions.
S.W. Anderson
Bush is an incompetent man, and what’s going on in the White House involving everyone connected with him is Anything to Win™, always, unceasingly, no matter what it takes, no matter what it means.
If that calls for lying, they lie. If that requires covering up, they cover up. If it means buying news stories or planting a phony reporter, that’s what they will do. If it means trying to trash good people for political advantage, c’est la vie. If it means going against the Constitution, trashing traditions, breaking faith, soiling the sandbox so nobody will want to play in it again, so be it.
Incompetent or not, Bush is conscious and sentient at least several hours a day — not so out of it he doesn’t know what’s going on around him. So, he rates as a bad man in my book.
Bruce Moomaw
Tbrosz: “All online Internet polls are crap. No exceptions.”
Yep. But now we have a real one, courtesy of Rasmussen (which has a good track record), and it’s not all that reassuring for Bush either. On Dec. 9 and 10, before the wiretapping brouhaha, there was a 58-32 margin against it. Granted that about 2/3 of the voters would support their own party if they saw its leader eat a live baby on television, but just a 26-point margin against impeachment right now is a bit closer than most presidents would be happy with. If a solid majority of the public ever concludes that he DID lie us into the war — which is a real possibility…
Bruce Moomaw
From tonight’s Washington Post:
“The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush’s domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.
“Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president’s eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court…
“The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable
about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president’s suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court…
“As it launched the dramatic change in domestic surveillance policy, the administration chose to secretly brief only the presiding FISA court judges about it. Officials first advised U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, the head of FISA in the fall of 2001, and then Kollar-Kotelly, who replaced him in that position in May 2002. U.S. District Judge George Kazen of the Southern District of Texas said in an interview yesterday that his information about the program has been largely limited to press accounts over the past several days.
” ‘Why didn’t it go through FISA,’ Kazen asked. ‘I think those are valid questions. The president at first said he didn’t want to talk about it. Now he says, “You’re darn right I did it, and it’s completely legal.” I gather he’s got lawyers telling him this is legal. I want to hear those arguments.’
“Judge Michael J. Davis of Minnesota said he, too, wants to be sure the secret program did not produce unreliable or legally suspect information that was then used to obtain FISA warrants. ‘I share the other judges’ concerns,’ he said.
“But Judge Malcolm Howard of eastern North Carolina said he tends to think the terrorist threat to the United States is so grave that the president should use every tool available and every ounce of executive power to combat it. ‘I am not overly concerned’ about the surveillance program, he said, but ‘I would welcome hearing more specifics.’ “
jaime
This is a question every wingnut in here WILL not answer.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Are we talking just Bush or his Administration?
Because a majority already do think we were deliberately misled by the Bush Administration into the Iraq War.
Geek, Esq.
So now JC is being disowned by secular Republican wingnuts in addition to fundamentalist Republican wingnuts.
Angry Engineer
To me, this sounds a lot like an Easton aluminum tubeset for a high-end bicycle. Except the cost of the Easton stuff is even higher.
Getting back on topic, the whole NSA bit sure angers me, but it doesn’t surprise me one bit. I’d expected no less
I think the surest sign that the administration is lying is the number of different justifications they’ve thrown out to the public in response to this story. The bottom line is that if indeed there was a flaw with the FISA act, then that flaw should have been fixed via legislative means. After all, who controls Congress? It’s not like this executive order was enacted for a few months until a new law could be drafted and passed; three years is not a “temporary measure”.
searp
To John Cole:
You are in good company. It appears as if it is not only Democrats and Independents who have a big problem with the veracity of this administration, it is Michael Luttig and the 4th District Appeals Court.
Of course, anyone who has actually followed what this President has said versus what he has done hasn’t believed a word out of his mouth for a long time.
Tim F.
lol. I just replaced some centrifuge parts (not a uranium ‘fuge, the ordinary kind). I’d give my right leg for a component that cheap.
Hell, I’m on the market for a commuter bike and I’d love to find a reliable ride with tubes that cheap.
If Iraq paid $17 per tube they definitely weren’t making centrifuges, and they probably weren’t making bikes.
Bruce Moomaw
“It appears as if it is not only Democrats and Independents who have a big problem with the veracity of this administration, it is Michael Luttig and the 4th District Appeals Court.”
God, yes. That opinion reads like Jesus whipping the moneylenders out of the Temple. I’m afraid Luttig can forget about taking the next step up the judicial ladder.
chef
I can’t believe it. I heard dougJ’s spoof (with the Wilsons as French spies) cited as gospel by some imbecile on C-Span Thursday AM.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Hahah, chef! Too funny.
chefrad
No joke! A caller went on and on about it. I spilled coffee all over my pants.
The Wilsons were mentioned in the same breath as the Rosenbergs.
Ari Fleisher is right: watch what you say; watch what you do.
DougJ has his PEEPS!
The Other Steve
Was it a caller?
It could be an expansion of Operation DougJ.
Mac Buckets
No scientific evidence or anything, but I’ve noticed a pretty strong correlatation between the vehemence with which one opposes drugs laws and the vehemence with which one opposes having international phone calls monitored.
I’m just saying…
Darrell
Of course not.. whether or not they are foreigners not subject to US constitutional protections is “useless” detail. Oh, and wiretaps and raids which “terrorize” are very different as anyone but the most extreme will tell you. Thanks for explaining your ‘logic’.
Darrell
Goldstein’s response:
bago
So, Darrel got owned with the 15 days thing. Is he ever going to answer the question?
W.B. Reeves
No, Darrell isn’t interested in real debate. His interest is in political theater. For him discourse is just another ring of the political circus. His arguments aren’t intended to persuade or convince, they are presented purely for effect. You aren’t witnessing an attempt at communication but a performance. Darrell strutting his stuff in the cyber sawdust. A star attraction in the blogospheric bigtop.
What I find ineffibly sad is that he seemingly fancies himself as flying high above the center ring when he’s actually cutting capers below.
The Disenfranchised Voter
I’ll agree to that. Since the prohibition of drugs and the thus the war on drug users is unconstitutional I do think they will use both the Pat act and NSA to conduct the war on drugs.
Before you question my statement that drug prohibition is unconstitutional, ponder this…It took a Constitutional Amendment to make a single drug, alcohol, illegal. The prohibiton of drugs will be unconstitutional until they pass some amendments…
The Disenfranchised Voter
“I do think” should be “I am worried that”