War Without Warrants & Subpoenas
Posted on January 29, 2006
The New York Timesand the ACLU are once again whining over the NSA debacle. I think they should hear this message from AJ Strata
To all those misinformed folks who have become so confused about FISA and NSA let me simplify it for you. We do not wage war with warrants and subpoenas. We fight crime and protect peoples rights with warrants and subpoenas, we do not fight wars with them.
NSA is a military organization - part of our war fighting capability. FISA is a court and the FBI is domestic law enforcement. We do not send judges and US Attorney Generals and FBI Agents to fly sorties or execute special operations (though there could be a case for FBI agents in some scenarios). Conversely, we do not send the marines in to bust up drug rings, or US special operations forces for crowd control.
We do not issue warrants for the arrests of enemy soldiers - we attack them and either kill them, drive them back or hold them as prisoner without any legal representation.
Conversely, we do not send a platoon of our finest to take a into custody an expected criminal, and drag them in front of a military tribunal (well, unless the target is a little Cuban boy fleeing a communist military tribunal).
There are no Miranda rights in war. There is no public defender. There is no bail. There is no concept of parole (send them back to the enemy as long as they promise not to fight again for 12 months?). There are no subpoenas and there are no warrants.
And in a war we will have people who will help the enemy. We will have the American Taliban, the American dirty bomber. Just like there was the EU shoe bomber, and EU/UK train/bus/subway bombers. To help the enemy one must contact the enemy. When one contacts the enemy in order to help the enemy, whether he is a US citizen or not, he becomes the enemy.
Our military and our leaders understand that they hold awesome responsibility in their hands, and they have no intention of letting that power be misused - because it can easily be misused against them! The naivette on the left about war is only matched by the naivette on the left about people who work to protect us. They are career people who take their jobs seriously and who come from all political corners.
Bush doesn’t select the targets for NSA monitoring. He established a process of organizations and people to make sure the selection of targets overseas is done to meet the mission of stopping Al Qaeda - and then he placed that responsibility in their hands. People who think Bush or one of his WH aides can just call up and say monitor the ACLU are simply demonstrating ignorance - not defiance. Read the whole thing.
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13 Responses to “War Without Warrants & Subpoenas”
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Like I’ve been posting all along, this business over NSA wiretaps isn’t going anywhere anyway. The only people crying about it are political animals at war with Bush. According to all the polls, Americans simply do not care. Not even a little. They’d rather not get blown up, you see.
“People who think Bush or one of his WH aides can just call up and say monitor the ACLU are simply demonstrating ignorance - not defiance.”
Last week, Bush said if you’re talking to Al Qeada, we want to know about it.
I wonder what the ACLU is so afraid of!
People do not care about the surveillence simply because it is such a non issue; except to a rather tiny minority who are always looking for a way to expose governments wrong doing or to try to extort money.
Who are the people that avocate to protect those who want to harm anyone in our country? I believe the ACLU is blind to the fact that those who were responsible for 9/11 were sleepers in our beatifull AMERICA. To the lawyers of the ACLU; Have you ever been out of United States of America? I believe you haven’t. Take a trip just to our south or north, Are you liked there for who you are, or is it the money you carry in your pocket? Open your eyes! Those people from anywhere else want your money and your country too! Let’s find out who the sleepers are and get rid of all the crud that is within our wonderfull country that want to harm us. Our government needs to do what it needs to do to protect us and you too, ACLU!.
As portrayed, the act is completely legal. As long as the target of the eavesdropping is overseas the President needs no warrant. Let’s keep in mind that they are targeting known terrorists or groups that support them OVERSEAS. They cannot use anything against the U.S. side against them.
If you don’t want people listening in, don’t talk to terrorist!
Wikipedia Coverup! ACLU Admin vs Anti-Communist “Vandals”!
The problem is that the government traditionally does not limit its use of such things to “the war.” A good example is the Patriot Act, which is sold as an anti-terrorism act, but is used primarily in general law enforcement that has nothing to do with terrorism.
People seem to forget the reason we put these limits on surveillance and intrusion — because it was grossly misused in the past. There is no reason to believe that it will not be misued now.
Sure, we all love President Bush and know he will never allow it to be used wrongly. But how about President Hillary Clinton? How about President Kerry, or President Gore?
What amusing is to see all the people who were appalled by the “Know your Customer” policies the Clinton administration tried to put in place, now embrace essentially the same provisions.
I disagree. I don’t believe that just because its the government that it will inevitably use the act to violate my civil liberties. Sure, in the hands of Hillary that could be a problem. But the problem wouldn’t be Hillary tapping my phone, it would be the ACLU and other leftists not investigating. Remember, this is an attack on Bush. It is strictly political. You will never convince any logical American that it is anything but. If a liberal president were to tap my phone no one would make a peep.
Well, apostle, you are certainly welcome to your opinion. But you have to realize that your opinion ignores 200 years of American history, where the government has consistently abused its power in this manner. I would challenge you to point to that halcyon era of American history where politicians did not do so.
Early America? No. Remember the Sedition Acts?
War Between the States? No.
World War I? No.
World War II? No.
Cold War? No.
Vietnam? No.
Civil Rights era? No.
Can’t blame the ACLU for all of those. The truism remains that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We established limits on government for a good reason.
The President has the constitutional responsibility to perform these intercepts and he does not need anyones approval in the context I explained earlier. Fers, and civil liberty concerns have no standing. ONLY if he used this EXCLUSIVELY domestically would there be a problem.
Well, unless you happen to have a line to the Supreme Court that I don’t know about, your assertion is pretty much that — just an assertion. I can just as easily assert that he does not have the constitutional responsibility to do so, but instead has the constitutional responsibility to respect the civil liberties of the citizens of the US. You seem to forget that the primary concern of the Founders was *limiting* the power of the executive branch, not *increasing* it.
Further, of course, regardless of what the Supremes decide, it has nothing to do with whether it is ultimately right or wrong. Unless, of course you want to start justifying random seizures of property on the basis of Kelo, or claim that slavery was a good thing until the 14th amendment was passed.
There’s an old saying among lawyers that if your client is innocent, plead the facts and if he is guilty argue the law. The same is true of these abuses of power. If you can’t justify it on the basis of the basic principles of the founding of this nation, argue that it doesn’t matter because it’s legal.
Lots of dictators in the past have justified their excesses on the basis that they got laws passed to make it “legal.” That is not, and never has been, an excuse. And its not an excuse for excesses in today’s society either.
I will stick to the facts, my comment as stated is correct. In fact, no one that knows the law is arguing that what I just said is not completely accurate. I cannot tell you one day to the next how SCOTUS will decide anything. See the Kelo decision and Medical Marijuana and try and make sense of those rulings. I can only tell you that the Executive Branch does have the right to intercept international calls as long as the U.S. citizen is not the target. Also, nothing discovered about the U.S. Citizen can be used in court without a warrant.
If you don’t want the government to listen in on your calls, do not talk to a terrorist overseas.
If you are overseas and you don’t want to get blown up, don’t dine with terrorists
No, you are sticking to an assertion. It is merely an assertion, even if stated with absolute certainty. There are people who state with absolute certainty the “fact” that the earth is flat. Further, in contradiction to your claim, there are lots of well-qualified lawyers who have stated that the President has overstepped his authority.
In fact, you contradict yourself. You state that it’s a “fact,” yet you move on to acknowledge that you do not have a clue what the Supreme Court will have to say on the matter when it comes to them.
Flippant disdain for civil liberties is not the hallmark of a free society.