How can the Rats say they support the troops when they don't even want calls monitored from Iraq AQ to America that may show where the next attacks on our soldiers will occur? Or calls from Iran, where a lot of the planning is going on.
No one is saying that we should not be listening in on suspected Al-Queda conversations.
Some people - including many conservatives and Republicans - are saying that we should be getting warrants to do so as the FISA law requires.
We have the technology to do it and would be foolish not to do so.
They probably know the ip address of EVERY Freeper since we're kind of on the far right fring.
Bull puckey...it's been questioned ONLY by those that have an agenda.
Biden went into a long rant about how he thought it was ridiculous for people to complain when the press points out that, say, our rail yards are not secure. After all, pointed out the Senator, don't people think Al Quaeda already knows that withou it being pointed out to them?
Then it hits me; he's trying to take the heat off of Rockefeller. He's belittling the leaks, making them seem trivial, like they can do no harm.
He has nothing to ask the AG about the NSA surveillance, he spends most of his time minimizing the leaks, which is certainly not the purpose of the hearings.
The "FISA warrants are handed out like candy" argument is a pile of rubbish. If the FISA court is a rubber stamp then it's doing nothing to protect anyone's civil liberties. Obviously the judges on the FISA court don't consider themselves a rubber stamp. That's why the applications take so long to put together.
Additionally, the time to get a FISA warrant is only part of the problem. The effort is huge. The applications are an inch thick and take a week or more to prepare. Now we capture a terrorist and his cell phone has 50 numbers stored in it. Do we A) start monitoring those phone numbers or B) create 4+ feet of paperwork and hope a judge approves them. Take your time, there's no hurry.
The Authorization to Use Military Force said the President could kill Al Qaida. Are these Senators really contending that the President can kill them but not listen to their phone calls?
Applying FISA to a wartime enemy is absurd. If an old-fashioned invasion were taking place would we really stop listening to the enemy radios once their troops reached shore? Of course not. What we have today is a blurrier case of the same thing. Some of the enemy have come ashore but they're not wearing uniforms or contained in a Forward Edge of a Battle Area.
All the pundits, scholars and officials have spent about two months arguing over the legality of this program. Could you imagine the stupidity of delaying counter-terrorism efforts for that long after 9/11? We'll go after Al Qaida as soons as the lawyers and politicians figure out what we can and can't do.
The whole thing is absurd. In wartime you intercept the enemy's communications. If they happen to talk to fifth-columnist in our country, it's imperative we find them. If innocent conversations get picked up too there is no harm, none. If the NSA picks up two U.S. persons talking to each other the contents are thrown away and the accidental intercept is logged and reported to the fools in Congress.
Half the calls we make today have that stupid "this call may be recorded for quality purposes" anyway. May the corporate Q/A departments should outsource the work to the NSA.
(Non-support of the troops will be another biggie.)
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Why The Funky Capitalization, CyberAnt?