The New York Times Swings, And Misses
How many times can a paper continue to bring up lie after lie before someone--like their ombudsman--tells them to knock it off? In my opinion, the NY times is shooting for that record with today's editorial. Entitled Kabuki Congress, it takes Congress to task for not stepping in and halting the president's programs designed to prosecute this war. It also slanders the military for crimes it never committed.
Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.
Lie number one: The NSA program is not surveilling American citizens. It is intercepting communications from other parts of the world, including those coming into the United States. Those intercepts are targeting foreign agents on US soil. Under court precedent, the president is authorized to conduct such intercepts, especially during a time of war.
It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.
Lie number two: FISA is not part of the US Constitution. However, the powers of the president are firmly articulated in Article II, which gives the president the authority to order our intelligence agencies--during a time of war--to use and all means necessary of stopping our enemy from doing the nation any sort of harm. In short, the president's authority under the Constitution--again, upheld by the federal courts--trumps FISA. FISA cannot dictate to the president what he can and cannot do. IT is not the ultimate authority the president must abide by. The Constitution is.
In 2004, to take one particularly disturbing example, Congress learned that American troops were abusing, torturing and killing prisoners, and that the administration was illegally detaining hundreds of people at camps around the world. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, huffed and puffed about the abuse, but did nothing. And when the courts said the detention camps do fall under the laws of the land, compliant lawmakers simply changed them.
Lie number three: It is true that we found some in the military that were abusing detainees. And yes, during one interrogation, a detainee lost his life. That is regretable, and the soldiers responsible for both the death and the abuse have been punished. But the Times treats these reports as "widespread" rather than the isolated incidents that they are. To assert that these are widespread violations of the UCMJ and the Geneva Convention is a slander that is unforgivable. And the Times also dislikes the fact that the detention facilities set up for the people we catch has been held as legal, just as their designation as "illegal combatants" has been upheld. These people in custody are not prisoners of war, as they fulfill none of the provisions under the Geneva Convention for that status. The courst have ruled their detention legal, and the jurisdiction of the military tribunals legal.
Now the response of Congress to Mr. Bush's domestic wiretapping scheme is following the same pattern, only worse.
At first, lawmakers expressed outrage at the warrantless domestic spying, and some Democrats and a few Republicans still want a full investigation. But the Republican leadership has already reverted to form. Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held one investigative hearing, notable primarily for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's refusal to answer questions.
General Gonzales answered the questions presented to him in the best possible way. As the Judiciary Committee is no the Senate or House Intelligence Committees, certain information could not be divulged to Senator Specter and Company. This is something that may irritate the Left on that committee, and it clearly irritates the Times, but it is the truth, nonetheless. The Attorney General can answer only questions that are permissable to speak of in public. Anything further must be given to those with the clearance, which is why both the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee are running their own investigations. Personally, I believe this investigation should not have even taken place, but as it is, it falls under the purview of the Intelligence Committee alone.
Mr. Specter then loyally produced a bill that actually grants legal cover, retroactively, to the one spying program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. It also covers any other illegal wiretapping we don't know about — including, it appears, entire "programs" that could cover hundreds, thousands or millions of unknowing people.
I am surprised that in that breathless paragraph above we were not treated to an overview of their idea of McCarthyism, and how the "Red Scare" has now turned into the "Muslim Scare." The Times is a pathetic piece of garbage without two collective brain cells amongst any of the editorial staff.
Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Of which, neither the Act or the Court may trump the president's powers. Both apply to US citizens, and not intercepts of conversations abroad, or those abroad coming into this country. If the president wants to listen in on a conversation between two people--one in New York, and the other in Long Beach--and they are discussing things such as "bombs" or "explosives", or any other number of key words programmed into computers, yes he must obtain a warrant. But if a call originates in Kabul and is going to New York, there is no warrant necessary. Likewise were it vice versa. This is where the times constantly screws this story up. The president could care less about Aunt Edna's banana bread recipe. He's more interested in the plans of those wanting to strike the capital, the Sears Tower, or the Pan-Am building in San Francisco.
Let's call this what it is: a shell game. The question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls and e-mail messages while following the existing rules.
First, the administration has not broken the law. If the Times really wants to challnege the administration on this, then roll the dice and file a lawsuit. Challenge it up to the Supreme Court. But I hope they are ready for a loss as the Supreme Court will uphold the precedent already set by five other cases (Clay, Butenko, In re Sealed Case 01-002, Truong, and US v. US District Court). Secondly, the Times asserts the administration has not provided proof that they are only monitoring foreign agents here that are receiving instructions from elsewhere in the world. They assert that this is a program that is targeting US citizens, yet they provide no evidence to back that claim up. They are doing what they accuse the administration of doing. And whereas the administration has since explained this program, the Times has failed to get a "gotcha" moment on the administration to prove their explanation as false.
In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law.
On the contrary, it has. Some of the NSA intercepts obtained by Iyman Faris--the man who wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge--were indeed timely in his capture. The timing is the most important aspect of this program. And that is just one example. I am sure there are a few others that have yet to be released to the public. But the Times, like many other MSM outlets, seems to believe that they should have access to, and be allowed to reveal, classified programs by the US government without fear of repercussions. I happen to believe differently, and I hope the Times is hit with criminal charges over the release of this program.
The administration has assured the nation it had plenty of good reason, but there's no way for Congress to know, since it has been denied information on the details of the wiretap program. And Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, seems bent on making sure it stays that way. He has refused to permit a vote on whether to investigate the spying scandal.
Has the Times forgotten the adage of "need to know?" It seems they have as the whole of Congress does not have a "need to know" about every little program the administration is carrying out. Yes, they serve as a check against the executive branch, but where was that check enforced when Presidents Clinton, Bush (41), Reagan, and Carter all did the exact same thing for different reasons? Congress and the Times seemed to have no problem with the program then, but all of a sudden they do now? How much more hypocrisy can the common sense people of this nation take before they simply quit listening to these air-headed talking heads?
There were glimmers of hope on the House side. Representative Heather Wilson, the New Mexico Republican who heads one of the subcommittees supervising intelligence, called for a "painstaking" review of the necessity and legality of the spying operation. But the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, is turning that into a pro forma review that would end with Congress rewriting the foreign-intelligence law the way Mr. Bush wants.
The way the president wants it, or the way it should be redone for a post-9/11 world? The Times may think we are still living back in the fifties and sixties without everyone having the wonders of technology at their fingertips, but the world is not as they envision it. Our enemy, though from likely impoverished nations, is not a backwoods farmer. These people are highly-motivated zealots who would do anything for the cause. Indeed, the 9/11 hijackers lay in wait over the course of a couple of years while preparing to strike. They blended in with our society, and went virtually unnoticed. The same is true for the next group coming up through the al Qaeda ranks. They will "suffer" under the stifling freedom America has to offer until the moment is right, our guard is down, and they take maximum advantage hitting us where they know it will hurt. Amending FISA is a necessary step in this 21st Century world.
Ms. Wilson still says that the House needs to get the facts before it rewrites the law, and we hope she sticks to it. But she's facing a tough race this fall, and her staff has already started saying that, well, she never called for "an investigation," just "an oversight review."
Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.
I suppose the same could be said for the Times, too. Their standards have sunk lower than Jon Stewart's non-jokes at the Oscars last night. And they still need a lawyer looking over ridiculous editorials like this to make sure their facts are straight prior to it going to print. People like me would spend less time during the day correcting them had they done their homework.
The Bunny ;)
How many times can a paper continue to bring up lie after lie before someone--like their ombudsman--tells them to knock it off? In my opinion, the NY times is shooting for that record with today's editorial. Entitled Kabuki Congress, it takes Congress to task for not stepping in and halting the president's programs designed to prosecute this war. It also slanders the military for crimes it never committed.
Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.
Lie number one: The NSA program is not surveilling American citizens. It is intercepting communications from other parts of the world, including those coming into the United States. Those intercepts are targeting foreign agents on US soil. Under court precedent, the president is authorized to conduct such intercepts, especially during a time of war.
It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.
Lie number two: FISA is not part of the US Constitution. However, the powers of the president are firmly articulated in Article II, which gives the president the authority to order our intelligence agencies--during a time of war--to use and all means necessary of stopping our enemy from doing the nation any sort of harm. In short, the president's authority under the Constitution--again, upheld by the federal courts--trumps FISA. FISA cannot dictate to the president what he can and cannot do. IT is not the ultimate authority the president must abide by. The Constitution is.
In 2004, to take one particularly disturbing example, Congress learned that American troops were abusing, torturing and killing prisoners, and that the administration was illegally detaining hundreds of people at camps around the world. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, huffed and puffed about the abuse, but did nothing. And when the courts said the detention camps do fall under the laws of the land, compliant lawmakers simply changed them.
Lie number three: It is true that we found some in the military that were abusing detainees. And yes, during one interrogation, a detainee lost his life. That is regretable, and the soldiers responsible for both the death and the abuse have been punished. But the Times treats these reports as "widespread" rather than the isolated incidents that they are. To assert that these are widespread violations of the UCMJ and the Geneva Convention is a slander that is unforgivable. And the Times also dislikes the fact that the detention facilities set up for the people we catch has been held as legal, just as their designation as "illegal combatants" has been upheld. These people in custody are not prisoners of war, as they fulfill none of the provisions under the Geneva Convention for that status. The courst have ruled their detention legal, and the jurisdiction of the military tribunals legal.
Now the response of Congress to Mr. Bush's domestic wiretapping scheme is following the same pattern, only worse.
At first, lawmakers expressed outrage at the warrantless domestic spying, and some Democrats and a few Republicans still want a full investigation. But the Republican leadership has already reverted to form. Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held one investigative hearing, notable primarily for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's refusal to answer questions.
General Gonzales answered the questions presented to him in the best possible way. As the Judiciary Committee is no the Senate or House Intelligence Committees, certain information could not be divulged to Senator Specter and Company. This is something that may irritate the Left on that committee, and it clearly irritates the Times, but it is the truth, nonetheless. The Attorney General can answer only questions that are permissable to speak of in public. Anything further must be given to those with the clearance, which is why both the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee are running their own investigations. Personally, I believe this investigation should not have even taken place, but as it is, it falls under the purview of the Intelligence Committee alone.
Mr. Specter then loyally produced a bill that actually grants legal cover, retroactively, to the one spying program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. It also covers any other illegal wiretapping we don't know about — including, it appears, entire "programs" that could cover hundreds, thousands or millions of unknowing people.
I am surprised that in that breathless paragraph above we were not treated to an overview of their idea of McCarthyism, and how the "Red Scare" has now turned into the "Muslim Scare." The Times is a pathetic piece of garbage without two collective brain cells amongst any of the editorial staff.
Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Of which, neither the Act or the Court may trump the president's powers. Both apply to US citizens, and not intercepts of conversations abroad, or those abroad coming into this country. If the president wants to listen in on a conversation between two people--one in New York, and the other in Long Beach--and they are discussing things such as "bombs" or "explosives", or any other number of key words programmed into computers, yes he must obtain a warrant. But if a call originates in Kabul and is going to New York, there is no warrant necessary. Likewise were it vice versa. This is where the times constantly screws this story up. The president could care less about Aunt Edna's banana bread recipe. He's more interested in the plans of those wanting to strike the capital, the Sears Tower, or the Pan-Am building in San Francisco.
Let's call this what it is: a shell game. The question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls and e-mail messages while following the existing rules.
First, the administration has not broken the law. If the Times really wants to challnege the administration on this, then roll the dice and file a lawsuit. Challenge it up to the Supreme Court. But I hope they are ready for a loss as the Supreme Court will uphold the precedent already set by five other cases (Clay, Butenko, In re Sealed Case 01-002, Truong, and US v. US District Court). Secondly, the Times asserts the administration has not provided proof that they are only monitoring foreign agents here that are receiving instructions from elsewhere in the world. They assert that this is a program that is targeting US citizens, yet they provide no evidence to back that claim up. They are doing what they accuse the administration of doing. And whereas the administration has since explained this program, the Times has failed to get a "gotcha" moment on the administration to prove their explanation as false.
In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law.
On the contrary, it has. Some of the NSA intercepts obtained by Iyman Faris--the man who wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge--were indeed timely in his capture. The timing is the most important aspect of this program. And that is just one example. I am sure there are a few others that have yet to be released to the public. But the Times, like many other MSM outlets, seems to believe that they should have access to, and be allowed to reveal, classified programs by the US government without fear of repercussions. I happen to believe differently, and I hope the Times is hit with criminal charges over the release of this program.
The administration has assured the nation it had plenty of good reason, but there's no way for Congress to know, since it has been denied information on the details of the wiretap program. And Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, seems bent on making sure it stays that way. He has refused to permit a vote on whether to investigate the spying scandal.
Has the Times forgotten the adage of "need to know?" It seems they have as the whole of Congress does not have a "need to know" about every little program the administration is carrying out. Yes, they serve as a check against the executive branch, but where was that check enforced when Presidents Clinton, Bush (41), Reagan, and Carter all did the exact same thing for different reasons? Congress and the Times seemed to have no problem with the program then, but all of a sudden they do now? How much more hypocrisy can the common sense people of this nation take before they simply quit listening to these air-headed talking heads?
There were glimmers of hope on the House side. Representative Heather Wilson, the New Mexico Republican who heads one of the subcommittees supervising intelligence, called for a "painstaking" review of the necessity and legality of the spying operation. But the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, is turning that into a pro forma review that would end with Congress rewriting the foreign-intelligence law the way Mr. Bush wants.
The way the president wants it, or the way it should be redone for a post-9/11 world? The Times may think we are still living back in the fifties and sixties without everyone having the wonders of technology at their fingertips, but the world is not as they envision it. Our enemy, though from likely impoverished nations, is not a backwoods farmer. These people are highly-motivated zealots who would do anything for the cause. Indeed, the 9/11 hijackers lay in wait over the course of a couple of years while preparing to strike. They blended in with our society, and went virtually unnoticed. The same is true for the next group coming up through the al Qaeda ranks. They will "suffer" under the stifling freedom America has to offer until the moment is right, our guard is down, and they take maximum advantage hitting us where they know it will hurt. Amending FISA is a necessary step in this 21st Century world.
Ms. Wilson still says that the House needs to get the facts before it rewrites the law, and we hope she sticks to it. But she's facing a tough race this fall, and her staff has already started saying that, well, she never called for "an investigation," just "an oversight review."
Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.
I suppose the same could be said for the Times, too. Their standards have sunk lower than Jon Stewart's non-jokes at the Oscars last night. And they still need a lawyer looking over ridiculous editorials like this to make sure their facts are straight prior to it going to print. People like me would spend less time during the day correcting them had they done their homework.
The Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:23 PM
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