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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Don't Listen to Me...

Michelle Malkin has a wonderful post that consists mostly of links to other people's analysis of the entire Bush/NSA story. I have plenty I could write on this subject, but the links she has spell out the issues - especially the legal ones - and answers very well. But I have to point out my favorites:

Wall Street Journal op-ed:
[sic] ...The truth is closer to the opposite. What we really have here is a perfect illustration of why America's Founders gave the executive branch the largest measure of Constitutional authority on national security. They recognized that a committee of 535 talking heads couldn't be trusted with such grave responsibility...
Malkin:
Echelon, the Clinton-era NSA surveillance program, was investigated by 60 Minutes in 2000. Here's the show transcript.
Malkin again:

Now, go back and look carefully through the Times article. The reporters who have been so assiduously working on the story for at least a year couldn't find a single, non-anonymous expert in national security and the law to come up with the kind of informed analysis that took legal and counterterrorism bloggers three days to research and post.

How pathetic is that?

Daffyd at Big Lizards:
All I have to add is this: I've been scratching my head in puzzlement so hard that folks will think I have pediculosis. Let's review the bidding... senators, including some renegade Republicans, are getting in a lather because the NSA was caught red-handed intercepting electronic communications that cross the American border (in either direction) and analyzing them -- without the knowledge of the parties whose eaves were being dropped.

In other words, the NSA has been discovered in the act of doing its job.

There's much more there. Check it out.

4 comments:

  1. I don't know about you, but I'd tend to treat with a significant amount of scepticism comments on national security from a person who's claim to fame was publishing a book trying to justify stealing property and interning thousands of innocent people based solely on their country of origin and national security.

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  2. I'm not sure what I should be skeptical about. She pointed out a couple of facts, plain and simple.

    Not to mention I disagree with your portrayal of her.

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  3. She said that since a few Japanese Americans and immigrants might have been spies for Japan, it was fully acceptible to force ALL Japanese Americans and immigrants to sell all their property that wouldn't fit in a duffle bag on several days notice and send them off to internment camps for several years. What's not accurate about that portrayal?

    If someone said that since Pollard was a spy for Israel, the government shouldn't hire any Jews in security positions, you'd be up in arms. Why are you ok with the idea of doing something much worse to Japanese citizens?

    As for the current situation, check your "facts" more closely. There multiple postings on Clinton-era NSA activity which was clearly legal, unlike the current situation.


    There is also evidence that they were monitoring some communications that didn't cross the American border and merely used an international cell phone.

    There were clear ways to get legal wiretaps in minutes or even sooner without breaking the law. This was not an issue of national security. This was an an example of flagrantly ignoring the rule of law.

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  4. I agree that the Clinton-era stuff was legal - that was actually my point by linking it.

    As many keep pointing out, there's nothing illegal here. Clinton's associate AG was in the Chi. Tribune today stating that what Bush is doing is perfectly legal.

    As to the ones that may have turned out to be on an international phone in the US, I'm curious what happened afterwards in those instances.

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