Actually, the CIA wiretap program WAS illegal. The new FISA bill made the actions of the last several years legal, with retroactive immunity to boot.
Cite the case law that was broken by the wire taps, if there are any, it will be based on criminal law and not the law of war. During WW2, we routinely intercepted and decrypted German and Japanese transmissions without a warrant. In fact, it could be argued that we gained enough actionable intelligence through covert means that we were able to win the war (Yamamoto was tracked, intercepted, shot down and killed through “wire taps”). During the cold war and more recently, the US Navy tapped underwater phone lines http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-115877.html and gained all kinds of intel. Gathering information in time of war against our enemies is not illegal and not subjected to judicial review. FISA bill was created because of a grey area where the enemy is among us. Prior to this, we were separated by oceans - that is no longer the case.
There were 40 pending lawsuits against telecoms that engaged in the illegal wiretapping program.
Oooh, 40 pending lawsuits against telecoms engaged in “alleged” illegal wiretapping programs. I am sure the ACLU, NAMBLA, and George Soros are keeping all their litigious options open. Your argument is weak – 40 lawsuits do not mean “guilt” of illegal activity. The simple fact is that these companies complied with a request by the military and the NSA for information about people making calls to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the other stans and after some leaker gave the information to the New York Times, they were sued. The suits were done to expose the covert operation and damage the administration without regard to our national security and in my view the leaker was seditious at the least if not treasonous. The legal question is no longer valid, congress decided it was legal. Of course the companies are going to get immunity, we are at war and we need the companies to cooperate in order to win that war and congress did the right thing and insured that cooperation.
All of those were closed when FISA 2008 granted retroactive immunity when it was signed into law. There was no case allowed against the administration because the DoJ refused to allow any, because of "State Secrets Privelege" (hey, sounds a lot like Nixon!): http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Qa_ozpOGt8
You would take away a source of information from our effort to fight terrorism? Then you throw Nixon’s name around as if spying on the Democrats to try and win an election is equivalent to spying on Al Queda terror cells to try to save American lives and win a war.
The difference between WW2 and now is that apparently American citizens are now the "enemy".
You lack historical perspective and your naivety is shameful. The difference between WW2 and this war is that for WW2, we put all the “suspected” terrorists in interment camps. Yes, full blooded Americans of Japanese decent were rounded up, shipped to different states, and kept in camps under armed guard without any due process and no legal recourse. The Supreme Court ruled this action was constitutional. Yes, some American citizens have been deemed the enemy and spying on the enemy is completely legitimate in times of War particularly when the enemy is among the citizens.
Torturing prisoners is also illegal, against not only geneva conventions, but against our own Constitution, which guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.
You have no idea what you are talking about. First and foremost, the Geneva conventions were undertaken to establish “rules for warfare” (an oxymoron). One of the goals was to reduce the civilian deaths that had occurred during wars prior to the conventions. The only soldiers that are covered by the conventions are in fact “uniformed” soldiers. Anyone who takes up weapons against uniformed soldiers and are not wearing the uniform of their armed forces are exempt from the conventions and specifically are defined as “illegal combatants”. Illegal combatants can be summarily executed on the battlefield (check history for how the German Werwolfs were treated). They do not have rights except for the rights that we as a just nation choose to give them. The whole point being to spare civilians and non-combatants from attack when illegal combatants choose to hide among them – which are exactly what the terrorists are doing. Second, your threshold for the definition of torture is clearly different than mine. The point being, it is subjective. In the game of words that liberals use, I choose to call it coercive interrogation and there is nothing wrong with that. And finally, the constitution protects citizens of this nation, not the whole world. If it protected everyone in the world then there are about 500,000,000 Chinese whose civil rights are being violated, not to mention the horrors that are occurring in Africa.
Actually, the Constitution guarantees certain rights to *everyone*, whether they are a citizen or not. Which rights guaranteed to citizens, and which are guaranteed to all people are laid out clearly in the Constitution. In the 14th Amendment, it states: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. While the Constitution does not guarantee rights of a Chinese citizen to be protected by the Chinese government, it does guarantee that these rights will not be infringed by any American law.
The historical context of the 14th amendment was to grant rights to freed slaves; it was first intended to secure rights for former slaves and includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of which so many bad decisions have been based. It was not meant to grant “anchor baby rights” to children of illegals nor was it meant to grant full constitutional rights to foreigners, only to citizens. If you look into the history of the 14th amendment, you would find that it was only ratified under duress of the federal government. “In order to have 27 states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, it was necessary to count those states which had first rejected and then under the duress of military occupation had ratified, and then also to count those states which initially ratified but subsequently rejected the proposal.” As a self proclaimed “States Rights” advocate, you should study your history a little closer.
Torture is torture, no matter how you look at it. “Coersive Interrogation” is a lame excuse to make torture politically correct, and to make you feel good about it. In otherwords, its bullkaka. If you are inflicting physical pain in order to coerce information out of your victim, you are torturing them.
Shut up and quit torturing me with these illogical arguments. You are causing me physical pain and mental anguish. By your definition, childbirth and exercise are torture - oh wait, childbirth and exercise wont coerce information on possible terrorist attacks that could kill Americans, so I guess it’s not torture. We don’t have time to wait on these guys to volunteer information and besides what you call torture (water boarding) has only been done 3 times to 3 very bad people and I am good with it.
Was the war in Iraq illegal? Maybe.
Authorized by congress... duh!
The question lies with the whether or not Bush was honestly misinformed, or if he purposefully misled Congress and the people of the US.
What are you talking about? WMDs? That was only one of a long laundry list of reasons why we went into Iraq. You choose to focus on WMDS because it fits your desires. It’s the one item that got the most press because it was the scariest and most publicly acceptable reason for the war but regardless, taking shots at our aircraft on practically a daily basis in violation of the Cease fire agreement was more than enough justification to go into Iraq. If it was only about WMDs, I think we had more than enough reason to go in, there have been many WMDs found in Iraq, it’s the threshold you argue about. One nerve agent artillery round is enough for me. Since 2003, coalition forces have found over 500 weapons which contain mustard or sarin gas.
Please reiterate the laundry list of reasons to spend $600 Billion (and counting) in Iraq.
I should not have to explain this to you, you lived through it, about 3000 Americans didn’t. On September 11th, the world changed. We can no longer allow rogue nations like Iraq to have access to WMDs, to serve as a safe haven for terrorists, and to fund terrorism. Afghanistan, as war torn and run down as it was, served as a training ground and haven for Al Queda. There wasn’t an established military infrastructure or much of an economy but they were able to hit us here at home. Saddam Hussein hated us as much as the Taliban and he had much greater access to more sophisticated weapons and arms; he also had a bigger bank roll. The potential for an Abu Nidal with Iraqi backing to use the September attacks as a template and the Iraqi military as a supporter to inflict even greater damage to the US was a reality. We had Iraq (the easiest target in the AXIS of Evil) already largely contained by our military presence in Kuwaitj, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Going into Iraq for regime change was the right thing to do and considering the change that occurred in Libya, was an effective teaching tool.
The money is irrelevant to the discussion about the justification for the war. Its hindsight back seat driving that gives sniveling little twats like you a bullet item to talk about. Is it expensive, yes both in human lives and money but we are engaged and winning. We have to win this one or we will be back again in the future. WW2 was expensive too.
Was it worth it? Remember, they were taking shots at our aircraft that was flying over their airspace. If Russian jets were patrolling Idaho skies, I think we would be taking potshots at them too. But then that would be justification for an all out bombing according to your logic.
If Russian jets were flying over Idaho, it would be because you and your isolationist groups stood by and did nothing while Europe and our allies burned. We tried the isolationist route and again our History has shown that it leads to bigger wars. The no-fly zone was set up to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. It was authorized, legal, humane, and on top of all that, the right thing to do. The problem with it was that the Clinton Administration did not ratchet up the pressure for Saddams constant and flagrant disregard for the cease fire agreement that ended the first gulf war. We took our eye off the ball.
Was Saddam having sarin gas a bad thing? Yes. Was toppling the Iraqi government in such a way that these WMDs could easily disappear into someone else’s hands even worse? Definitely.
I thought your opinion was that there weren’t any WMDs? I agree that we did not use the correct method for toppling the Iraqi government. We should have killed the republican guard army while it was still a cohesive and functioning force. Instead, we tried to spare their lives and just targeted Baghdad. This lead directly to the insurgency as the republican guard (with their weaponry) melted into the population.
Secret CIA prisons? Definitely illegal.
Again, state the case law where this is illegal, we have already established that illegal combatants are not covered by the Geneva conventions and have no rights other than the ones we choose to give them. You are wrong on this and oh so many other things. Also, what prisons?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html
Ooh that’s a good source, a bunch of nameless hacks and back seaters doing a hatchet job. This stuff all took place immediately after 9/11 and assuming it is true, I am good with it. This is war and we reacted to the threat appropriately.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/1245_secret_cia.html
Turning terrorist over to their home countries and then letting them use “whatever means” they choose to wring information out of them is fine by me. I am all for “Rendition” flights.
Please refer to my Constitutional argument above.
Your constitutional argument is flawed by your lack of historical context and a seemingly missing self preservation gene. I would rather kick ass today and worry about the greay areas of it tomorrow when we have won the war and peace is flourishing. If we assume all military action is a civil/criminal activity, a lot of Americans are going to die. We don’t have the time or the luxury to gather forensics and build a case for prosecution.
As for the wiretaps, wiretapping itself is not a problem. It is the "warrentless" wiretapping that is the issue. The warrant is a check that ensures only "people calling known terrorist organizations" are being tapped. But if no warrant is being served, then how do we know that is what they are doing? We dont. If they truly only want to wiretap suspected terrorists, why is getting a warrant an issue?
I will tell you what is wrong with getting a warrant; it takes it out of military hands and puts it into the judiciary’s hands. The threshold for justification is a hell of a lot different in times of war than for criminal behavior. You fail to acknowledge the war. I will grant that the president should have petitioned congress for something more concretely definitive of a “declaration of war” but constitutionally speaking, it isn’t necessary: Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says "Congress shall have power to ... declare War;" however, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation text must have to be considered a "Declaration of War" nor does the Constitution itself use this term. Congress authorized action in Iraq and the commander in chief is still pursuing that action. Congress has the power to stop it at any time. So put the blame where it belongs.
Don’t worry, I place equal blame with the Congress as with the President. Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty.
You do not hold congress accountable. I have never seen you complain about the socialists democrats (Reed, Schumer, Frank, Biden, Hagel, Durbin, Feinstein, Boxer, etc, etc, etc) in fact, the only political figures I have heard you complain about are the President and the Vice President - oh, and Haliberton.
Remember, Bush lied about the existence of the program to begin with, so I don’t really trust him to be honest about the scope of the program (not to mention the relatively poor judgment exhibited over the last 8 years).
You are quick to throw the claim of “lies” out there. I believe that it is in our national security interests to keep covert actions secret. Downplaying leaks or trying to cover for those same leaks is courageous and justified.
Courageous? Please. He is covering his ass, nothing more. Covert actions are fine, however they must still conform to the law.
Again, you are trying to judge military decisions in time of war by civil courts and civil jurisprudence. Soldiers are not cops, they do not gather forensic evidence to build a case “beyond a shadow of a doubt” or even a “reasonable doubt” before they take action. They kill people and break things; they defend themselves and their fellow soldiers and take the fight to the enemy. The commander in chief has tremendous leeway to conduct a war and particularly a war against Islamic fundamentalists where many of those who are sympathetic to that cause are right here among us. Denying or downplaying intelligence gathering means and modes is in fact courageous and right.
When I voted for Bush in 2000, I voted for Compassionate Conservatism, of which Bush has been neither. Instead of compassion, we have cost the lives of 4,000 troops needlessly,
You denigrate the sacrifice those soldiers made by so cavalier an approach to what they have done. Success in Iraq is without a doubt in our best long term national interest, those men and women who died for our nation did not do so needlessly, it was needed, justified, and worthy of honor.
and we have now killed more Iraqis than the dictator we were supposedly trying to save them from.
Cite your source for this crap and even if it is true, how many would have been killed by Saddam had we not intervened in Gulf 1 and patrolled the southern and northern no fly zones for all those years? You fail to remember even recent history.
Success in Iraq is now only a matter of undoing the gigantic error we made by invading in the first place. Where Iraq was a “0” before we first invaded, it became a “-10”, and now the surge has made it a “-3”, and we are calling that “success”. It does not change the fact that 4,000 Americans are now dead, as well as 90,000 to 1.2 million Iraqis (depending on who you ask), as opposed to the estimated 100,000 to 600,000 people Saddam has killed (again, depending on who you ask).