The NSA Debate
Posted on September 5, 2006
Here are a few links and quotes from around the blogosphere on the NSA debate. This is going to be a major issue in the upcoming mid-term elections. I have worn myself thin repeating myself in this debate so I’ll just quote others this time around.
Glenn Greenwald rants on the framing of the debate and what he claims are falsehoods.
…the Republicans will attempt to exploit this debate by advancing two factually false claims:
Falsehood # 1: the debate is about whether the President can eavesdrop on Al Qaeda and other terrorists;
Falsehood # 2: “most Americans” support warrantless eavesdropping.
Whether Republicans get away with these two factually false claims depends on whether journalists do their jobs by pointing out that these claims are false (not unpersuasive, but false).
Well, here is a big, steaming cup of Smell The Coffee! From the links provided by Greenwald:
Quinnipiac:
By a 76 – 19 percent margin, American voters say the government should continue monitoring phone calls or e-mail between suspected terrorists in other countries and people in the U.S., according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. But voters say 55 – 42 percent that the government should get court orders for this surveillance.Gee, 76% support attempts to monitor terrorists phone calls; I suppose that could support Jonathan Weisman’s claim that “a majority of Americans… back the effort” and would like to see some sort of compromise worked out.
Or let’s cut to the ACLU. Their lead was that “A majority of voters want Congress to “demand that the warrantless eavesdropping be stopped because it is illegal.”
However, folks who actually check the poll results will find that the form of the question matters; respondents disapprove of “warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls” by 54-44 but they approve of “warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls to catch terrorists” by 57-41. That suggests a majority favors “the effort”, just as the WaPo says.
More Greenwald:
The difference between FISA and the warrantless eavesdropping program is not about whether the President can eavesdrop on terrorists. He can eavesdrop on all of the terrorists he wants under FISA as it is written. What is being debated — the only difference — is whether he should be able to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans with judicial oversight (as all Presidents have done for the last 30 years) or whether he can eavesdrop on Americans in secret, without oversight (which led to severe abuses of the eavesdropping powers in the four decades prior to FISA). That is what is being decided, not whether he can eavesdrop on terrorists.
Leaving FISA as is — or eliminating The Terrorist Surveillance Program today — would mean that the President can still freely eavesdrop on Al Qaeda’s conversations. If we eliminated The Terrorist Surveillance Program this minute, the President could still listen in when Osama bin Laden calls. That’s because FISA, as is, vests aggressive power in the President to eavesdrop on America’s enemies. Why is that so hard for journalists to comprehend?
Mr. Greenwald uses the phrase “eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans” when we all know the goal of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” is to eavesdrop only on communications related to terror suspects. The Constitution itself, with or without FISA, already “vests aggressive power in the President to eavesdrop on America’s enemies”, namely to order NSA surveillance of foreign terrorists. Arlen Specter has it right, FISA needs to be amended if only to eliminate this ongoing confusion the left still appears to be suffering from.
AJ Strata has some thoughts on the NSA debate and says that the solution should be obvious;
It is a military organization. Right now it is in a war with terrorists overseas trying to attack us here and abroad. To that end it is listening in on the terrorists overseas to determine their plans and identify where their forward forces are and how close they are to attacking American assets and people. The NSA takes direction through a military chain of command. It is not a law enforcement agency. It does not have the power or authority to request search warrants.
And the Judicial Branch has not authority to order or require the military request permission from a judge to follow orders legally given through the military chain of command. The parallels are obvious if people would just think about the precendent implied in the above statement. We would see field commanders seeking permission from a judge to seize land on the battlefield. We would see field commanders seeking permission from judges to detain enemy soldiers. We would see field commanders seeking permission from judges to demolish enemy facilities and infrastructure. Wars would be fought like local people fighting zoning issues and arrest warrants.
On another front the left are sending out the meme that Republicans stopped Clinton when he tried to push for expanding the wiretapping program. Of course they leave out a lot of facts.
Brian at Iowavoice takes this one on:
What caused Democrats to change their minds about wiretapping between 1996 and today? Terrorism is still around and has caused death and destruction on a horrendous scale. The need for surveillance is still there. Republicans are still in control of Congress. The only variable is, of course, George W. Bush. So I’m left to conclude that for Democrats, when it was Clinton, they were all for it. Now that it’s Bush, why, that’s just wrong! It’s just amusing to me that Chuck Schumer, a very vocal opponent of the current wire-tapping program, was all gung-ho about it a decade ago. Given that fact, liberals shouldn’t be so quick to point out that Republicans opposed Clinton on this.
Because on those very pages at CNN are a couple of links that show that the Republicans did indeed send an anti-terrorism bill to Clinton just a couple of months earlier, and a final bill was passed and signed by Clinton in October (I’m assuming it was in 1996). And they passed it largely intact, the way Clinton wanted it. What they didn’t pass, they funded in other areas.
So while liberals are currently trying to spin this little incident to their advantage, one thing is clear: after some initial opposition by Republicans, they still went ahead and worked with Clinton to get an anti-terrorism bill passed. Contrast that with the way Democrats are operating today: it’s either their way, or no way at all. They will not compromise, they will not negotiate, they will not yield. Except to the terrorists and their moonbat base, of course.
» Filed Under ACLU, News, War On Terror
Trackback URL
