ohh, ohh I know...lets "torture" Amir by covering his head w panties & making him listen to ol Teddy sing Irish drinking songs til he talks.

As Bush said himself, "I don't think you can win it," when asked if the U.S. could win the war on terror.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/31/politics/main639709.shtml

These neo-con fantasies expressed in reckless foriegn policy will only make terrorism more widespread.

Wade

Another good reason to slash terror funding for those greedy whiners.

Looks like another method for tracking terrorists has been exposed, as well. Hooray! Now the next wave of terrorists can avoid detection by avoiding internet chat rooms as they plot with one another to destroy us. Way to go, newsies!

Wade, that is not the complete quote. if you saw the actual interview you would know that Bush was saying we couldn't win the war in four years...

LNC, it was the FBI that revealed the method. Where is Bush's outrage!!!

via LGF-"Did the New York Times’ exposure of the SWIFT program jeopardize the tunnel bombing investigation?"

What the New York Times Has Wrought

American Spectator: It is not clear whether this case was one of several our sources claim they discussed in general terms with the New York Times, and which Treasury and Justice told the Times would be endangered if it went public with the SWIFT program. It appears the arrest of the plotter in Lebanon took place before the SWIFT story was leaked.

But another DOJ source added something interesting to the mix: “If you go back and look at some of our more successful anti-terrorism cases, they have focused on taking down entire networks. How do we do that? From the inside, peeling off a lead actor, turning him and using him to keep the plot moving forward so we can trace everyone else, the money, the accounts, the weapons dealers, everyone. I’ll just note that we weren’t able to do that with this case and leave it at that. We could have, but we weren’t able to. You’ll have to do the math for the Times.”
******************

The NYT's Bill Keller should be tried for treason!

Little Green frogs? Please. You no longer can criticize anyone for lifting ideas from the dailykos!

First, it's Little Green Footballs. Second, I never criticized anyone for lifting ideas from dailykos, so what are you talking about?

It looks to me like this was leaked from New York City or Capital Hill as a ploy to garner more anti-terror money.

I suggest that the money be sent - on condition that it be used to find and prosecute the leaker.

Thank you President Bush for keeping my loved ones safe.

Apparently DU and Dailykos are waiting for their talking points before they can comment on this.

Nice one Wade! You sure know how to cherry pick a quote when you need your own personal daily brainwashing. So far we have denial, red herrings... whens a lefty going to come in yelling "election year ploy! election year ploy!"?

I feel like a voice in the wilderness, but I will bring it up again -- it's not the programs per se, but the oversight that is the issue (or at least mine). How long does a "state of war" legitimately last? I mean my goodness, we've established legitimate governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But we're still at war, and thus Article II authority trumps all other considerations? Someone explain that to me. When does it end? My goodness, these surveillance programs have been in place for years now. And they are likely to be needed for many more. In the mean time any idiot can see that far more information is harvested in them than is needed to hunt terrorists. Until something is done in the way of establishing proper oversight, the potential for abuse is enormous. And if there is any principle one could very clearly extrapolate from the general working of government, it is that to the extent that the potential for abuse is available, sooner or later it will be acted upon. I'm sorry for sounding like a moonbat on this issue, but geez louise, what does it take? Will you wake up and smell the coffee only when it's poured on your head? No matter how shiny you think Bush's halo is, there is no way he can sit there wtih his finger on the pulse of every organ in the executive branch. I think we've already seen numerous examples to assure us of that. Oversight is not a partisan issue, it's a fundamental one.

ricorun wrote:

"How long does a 'state of war' legitimately last?"

Until we are victorious over all evildoers, of course!

This "plot" is just more bogus justification for maintaining a fear factor for hapless, gullible voters. We all know that come election day, we'll have a few more terror alerts thrown up and more bogus "leaks" about terrorist activity. Hell, we might even have another attack, just so Bush can declare martial law.

Here is the fact and we've all known it since before 9/11: You cannot stop a suicidal person from doing a harmful act... The people that the NSA FBI CIA catch are almost all dolts and bunglers, not the pros, and certainly not the ones who are thorough, committed and reliable.

If they're [FBI CIA NSA Bush] so smart, where's bin Laden? See? It's all bogus.

Sorry Wade...you need the entire context of what Bush said...we went over this LAST time you put this crap on here.

Try again little boy.

Little war boy, Wade provided the link to the complete context. You must be new to those internets...

The ring leader is a college professor arrested in May. From May to July he was tortured until he invented this story about bombing a tunnel to stop the pain. Just like in the Salem Witch Trials or the McCarthy era, he gave names to stop the pain.
There is nothing to this fairy tale expect the extreme lengths the torturers used to get a false confession.

Binthar,

How long does a 'state of war' legitimately last?-Ricorun

"Until we are victorious over all evildoers, of course!"-binthar

5,312

Binthar,

How long does a 'state of war' legitimately last?-Ricorun

"Until we are victorious over all evildoers, of course!"-binthar

5,312

Note the number is up to 5,319, now.

bin, what is it about the Left's determination to canonize the Other Bin---Bin Laden, that is?

Right now, the Adminstration has effectively neutralized him. He is no longer a hero, no longer a symbol of manly aggression, no longer a leader. He is a weak old man, scurrying from cave to cave trying to save his scrawny hide. His followers have been dropping out, looking for other leaders. His last "video" featured some footage of an old photo of him. He's a loser.

But you all are so obsessed with him, you seem dedicated to reviving his old status as Big Dude. You won't rest till he's dead and then elevated to hero/martyr status, resulting in more recruitment and retaliation, or captured, putting him on the world stage like Sadaam is. That would be a pretty picture---between the revenge killings for catching him and the hostage-taking trying to get him released and the imcreased recruitment to the cause, you Lefties would generate a whole new revival of Osama: The Leader.

I know this is far too subtle for y'all. I know it lacks the simple-mindedness required for you to be able to grasp it. But try.

Right now, Bin Laden is out of the picture. Your way would put him back in. So why, exactly, do you keep harping on him? Why, when the Adminstration has done such a good job of making him irrelevant, are you so focused on assuring the Arab world that he IS, by darn, REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT?

Sounds to me like your minders on Air America have been ranting on this, and you have been sent out to regurgitate the mantra.

Hey, if I were in charge and knew that Osama had been killed, I wouldn't tell anyone. I'd let the world keep thinking he is skulking in caves, too cowardly to be on the front lines like Al-Zarqawi.

Ricorun

Great post!! These are good questions you raise. Please continue to ask them. I wish I had good answers to the issues you raise. I suppose it comes down to does one trust Congress to provide the proper oversight and does one trust the administration. The only thing I trust Congress for is to look out for their own interests and given the mistakes this administrtion has made I don't really trust them. I really think the time for the Democrats to have raised a stink about the NSA program and others would have been BEFORE the program was implemented. At least, I'm pretty sure the intellegence commitees include Democrats. As such, they should have known about these programs before they were implemented.

Recently, as I understand it, in the Hamden case the Supreme Court has said that POTUS must go to Congress to get authority for military tribunals. It seems they have acted to check the authority of the Executive branch. Time will only tell of course, but tentatively I think this is a good thing.

In order to properly debate the privacy issue, one must first realize the threat that is posed by Islamic Extremists. Please continue to ask the questions. You are not alone here.

Freedon1

Thanks for the link regarding the "religon of peace." I wish someone would explain to President George w. Bush that this is not a religon of peace.

So typical of the neorads to steadfastly ignore the big story behind the plot's revelation and try to distract with silly irrelvant rants on Bin Laden and an old and out of context Bush quote.

The real story is that the FBI had been working with other agencies to round up a large group of plotters, and had to move in long before they wanted to, missing the opportunity to catch even more than they did--------BECAUSE a "news organization" was determined to publish a story on the uncovering of the plot.

And what do you Lefties do? Exactly what we would expect you to do. You start off by claiming there was really no plot at all, you come up with a typical and typically lame conspiracy theory that is as dumb as dirt (sorry, dirt..) and you spin off into totally irrelvant post that have nothing at all to do with what really happened.

And then Johan comes up with the wildest, most bizarre, INVENTION so far. And just how do you radicals KNOW that the plot never existed and was just a fiction presented to "stop the pain"? Please tell us. Tell us how you "know" this.

This is as goofy as the story about how one of the Twin Towers was mined with explosives, which were detonated to bring the building down. "Proved" by the fact that the building did come down, and made noises when it did so. No provenance for the story. (That means a traceable history, for you in LibLand.) No evidence. No background. And certainly no explanation for how a huge building, with people in it 24-7, could have been rigged with explosives with no one knowing, or how thesde explosives and wires could have gone undetected by maintenance people and employees and so on, or how it was that NOT ONE of the dozens and dozens of demo experts that would have been necessary to do such a job ever came forth with any info on this, or why it was determined to have THIS building come down from the top down instead of collapsing on itself from the bottom up like ALL other demo'd buildings do, or how this was accomplished. It was just a conspiracy theory that appealed to teeny tiny little minds, and one of them passed it on to us.

Facts? We don't need no steenkin' facts. We got Ranty Rhodes to tell it like it is.

And now it is a captured and TORTURED innocent professor who made things up ONLY TO STOP THE PAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tip: You need stronger tinfoil for those hats.

Why is the Left so panicked?

Because you KNOW that this is proof that the unAmerican treasonous media efforts to undermine the Admistration, by making it impossible to make any progress in the war on terrorists, and you know that the American public is likely to pull the plug on this effort.

Who provides the oversight?
How much oversight?
Who decides what needs oversight?
Who chooses the overseers?
Who oversees the overseers?
Who oversees the overseers of the overseers?

We have courts providing oversight right now. That is not enough for the ABB crowd. So what WILL be enough?

And what if an oversight group then agrees with the President? Do we then need an oversight group to oversee that one? What are the criteria?

Because it seems right now that the sole criterion for any "oversight" group is that it deny any authority to the President.

I think if a person was considered for a position as an overseer of some Administration program, and was found to believe the military records on file regarding the honorable and complete service of the President in the National Guard, that person would immediately be excluded from "oversight" committee.

The Left has switched to a noble-sounding claim of "ONLY wanting OVERSIGHT", because they are finally picking up on the fact that the American public WANTS ways to track bad guys. The efforts to eliminate those ways did not resonate with Americans. Then they tried supporting the revealing of surveillance on bad guys, and that has not won them any friends. So they have had to try to figure out a way to be able to effectively thwart any efforts to track bad guys, without appearing to do so----and here we have their answer.

Surveillance is OK---but only with OVERSIGHT. But we all know what they mean by "oversight". They mean the ability to stop anything they might see as advantageous to the Administration. And the danger to the country is that they believe that anything that makes this country safer will be advantageous to the Administration.

Look at the posts here, on a conservative web site. They are already setting it up. If this is what they are telling US, I wonder what they talk about amongst themeselves.

First, they JUST want OVERSIGHT.
Second, they deny the validity of anything done to provide security for the nation, even claiming that the recently exposed New York plots were faked
Third, they are already claiming that any other plots or attacks will be staged by the Administration for political purposes
Fourth, they are going back to dig up the old claims that 9/11 was staged by the Administration for political purposes.

They know that constantly thwarting the Administration's efforts to protect the country will have to result, eventually, in deaths and chaos here. They simply do not care, having already set in motion their plan to blame those deaths and that chaos on the very people who strove so valiantly to stop them.

The calculated and cold-blooded manueverings of the Left are sickening. The only bright spot in this is that they are so rabidly focused on what THEY want to happen, they are pretty oblivious to how transparent they are.

Frankly I think we really dodged a bullet with this one. These guys were perilously close to killing many Americans. They already had the hard part done, having an idea to blow up some place none of them had ever been to. All they needed to do was contact an actual al Qaeda member for support & approval without being detected, raise a couple hundred thousand dollars without getting caught, recruit 8-10 more guys without exposing their plot, get them all into the US without being detected, set themselves up in safehouses without looking suspicious, perform surveillance on the target site & do some practice runs without being seen, obtain a bunch of explosives & triggers without giving themselves away, build a dozen bombs without blowing themselves up & then actually do the deed without screwing up. That's far too close for my comfort, I'll tell you.