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Why Fir3start3r and other Bush Apologists Should Do Research On Their Subjects
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View this Thread in Original format
| MisterOpus1 |
In another thread, Fir3start3r posted a piece by the vile little cowturd, Ann Coulter, to help bolster his case as a "yes man" Bush supporter at all stops:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...542#post5566542
I am here to demonstrate that to Fir3start3r that this issue pertaining to Bush's illegal wiretaps is simply indefensible. It should be a tip-off right off the bat that he is resorting to Coulter in order to defend his case. Not that she's stretched the truth or outright ing lied on numerous cases or anything. But I'm going to dissect her arguments here for all to see:
| quote: | Why We Don't Trust Democrats With National Security
Written by Ann Coulter
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Ann Coulter
It seems the Bush administration—being a group of sane, informed adults—has been secretly tapping Arab terrorists without warrants. |
No, actually they've been secretly tapping Americans, and not Arab ones at that you ing lying bitch:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/p...agewanted=print
Lie #1.
And does anyone else find it hilarious to have the terms "sane", "informed", and "adults" as descriptions of this Administration? Jesus that's rich.
| quote: | During the CIA raids in Afghanistan in early 2002 that captured Abu Zubaydah and his associates, the government seized computers, cell phones and personal phone books. Soon after the raids, the National Security Agency began trying to listen to calls placed to the phone numbers found in al Qaeda Rolodexes.
That was true even if you were “an American citizen” making the call from U.S. territory—like convicted al Qaeda associate Iyman Faris who, after being arrested, confessed to plotting to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. If you think the government should not be spying on people like Faris, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
By intercepting phone calls to people on Zubaydah’s speed-dial, the NSA arrested not only “American citizen” Faris, but other Arab terrorists, including al Qaeda members plotting to bomb British pubs and train stations.
The most innocent-sounding target of the NSA’s spying cited by the Treason Times was “an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.” Whatever softening adjectives the Times wants to put in front of the words “ties to Osama bin Laden,” we’re still left with those words—“ties to Osama bin Laden.” The government better be watching that person. |
Okay, **** Coulter uses here the instance of Iyman Faris to bolster her fallacious case with Bush's illegal wiretaps. Let me address the first one, Abu Zubaydah.
Now it's a fair and reasonable argument for the CIA and the FBI to start wiretapping this guy and his numbers overseas and in the U.S. after the raid. No one would dispute that as was described here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/p...agewanted=print
However, we must also remember just how close and connected we all are to suspected terrorist links. Many prominent people are close, here is an example that has been swept under the rug:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/200...rry-wesley.html
But in regards to Faris, here's a Newsweek article depicting the history of Faris back in 2003:
| quote: |
Attorney General John Ashcroft today unveiled some of the strongest evidence to date of Al Qaeda’s continued presence inside the United States—the plea agreement of a 34-year-old Columbus, Ohio, truck driver who admits he was plotting to cut the suspension cables on the Brooklyn Bridge and derail passenger trains under orders from Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants.
The unsealing of the plea agreement against Iyman Faris, 34, came only days after he was identified in a NEWSWEEK cover story, “Al Qaeda in America,” as one of a number of Qaeda operatives inside the country fingered by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks, who was captured in Pakistan last March.
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The court papers indicate that, upon returning to the United States from Pakistan in April 2002, Faris set about his mission, researching the purchase of “gas cutters” and the dimensions of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Internet. He sent coded messages back to another Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan using code—the “gas cutters,” for example, were referred to as “gas station.” Later in the year, Faris traveled to New York and physically surveyed the bridge. But according to the court papers, he concluded that any plot to destroy the bridge by severing the cables “was very unlikely to succeed because of the bridge’s security and structure.” At that point, he sent a message back to Al Qaeda that “the weather is too hot”—code for the mission was unlikely to succeed.
At the end of the day, if the court papers are to be believed, Faris never actually succeeded in committing any acts of terrorism and his work for the terror group apparently ended in March 2003 with Mohammed’s apprehension. (Sources tell NEWSWEEK that Mohammed did not at first volunteer Faris’s name. But cell phones and computer discs found in Mohammed’s Pakistani safe house enabled U.S. authorities to identify Faris—and a number of other operatives in the United States—and Mohammed eventually confirmed his contacts with the truck driver.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067877/site/newsweek/ |
To put it another way, our government had a foreign source (Mohammad) allegedly linking Faris to Al Qaeda. That source being foreign was NOT subject to FISA prohibition against warrantless wiretapping of U.S. persons.
Not to mention the fact that I wonder if anyone could possibly point out even if this was under FISA how we could not ascertain info. needed WITH a warrant 72 hours retroactively? But as it stands, this wasn't even the case, considering the source was foreign.
Just for confirmation, another Newsweek article lays out the fact thatt the source was truly foreign, as well as confirmation that the NSA illegal wiretaps had NOTHING to do with the Brooklyn Bridge case:
| quote: | Administration officials have suggested to media outlets like The New York Times—which broke the story—that the spying played a role in at least two well-publicized investigations, one in the United Kingdom and one involving a plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
But before the NSA’s warrantless spying program became public, government spokesmen had previously cited other intelligence and legal tactics as having led to major progress in the same investigations. In the Brooklyn Bridge case, officials indicated that the questioning of a captured Al Qaeda leader had led to investigative breakthroughs in Ohio.
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In both instances, officials originally indicated that key investigative developments came from sources other than NSA electronic eavesdropping—then still a closely guarded secret.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10711930/site/newsweek/ |
Interesting, ain't it Fir3start3r? It goes further:
| quote: | he best-known investigation was the case of Faris, a Columbus, Ohio, truck driver and naturalized U.S. citizen who pled guilty in 2003 to an alleged conspiracy that included the purported plot to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge. In interviews with the FBI, he also acknowledged visiting New York and casing the bridge, though later Faris recanted several admissions, including his acknowledgement that he had conducted surveillance of the bridge.
A transcript of Faris’s October 2003 sentencing hearing, before Judge Leonie Brinkema in Federal Court in Alexandria, Va., makes cryptic references to two separate sources of intelligence that helped the federal investigation. Prosecutor Neil Hammerstrom Jr. told the judge that on March 19, 2003, two FBI agents and an officer from an antiterror task force went to interview Faris in Ohio following what the prosecutor described as “a call that was intercepted in another investigation.” Hammerstrom said he didn’t want “to get into too many details in open court.” He indicated that when the agents first went to interview Faris, the suspect was not hostile and agreed to talk to them further, so they walked away from the interview without detaining him.
After Faris agreed to let them search his apartment, they came back the next day to do so. Later that day, according to Hammerstrom, the FBI got what he called “overseas source information that Mr. Faris had been tasked to go and look at the Brooklyn Bridge as a possible target of an attack by Al Qaeda.” David B. Smith, Faris’s current lawyer, says he is convinced this information came from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who had just been arrested in Pakistan. Armed with this information, the FBI then arrested Faris and later took him to the FBI academy at Quantico, Va., where he was questioned for several weeks and allowed to make cell-phone calls, which his lawyers believe were monitored with a warrant from the Justice Department’s secret foreign-intelligence surveillance court. The Justice Department announced Faris’s arrest, and guilty plea to terrorism charges, after the existence of the investigation was disclosed in a NEWSWEEK cover story.
Smith, who replaced another defense lawyer who had handled Faris’s guilty plea, is now preparing legal papers on his client’s instruction to try to re-open the case, based partly on the defendant's current claims that he lied to the FBI about his involvement in a Brooklyn Bridge plot. Smith says that, based on what prosecutors said in court at the time of Faris’s guilty plea, he is “skeptical” as to whether the NSA’s controversial monitoring program had “much of an impact” on the Faris case. “It’s exaggerated to say that NSA wiretaps made this case,” Smith told NEWSWEEK. Smith added that his client had recently claimed that while Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had tried to recruit him to terrorism, he only met the 9/11 mastermind to get material for a book he wanted to write about Al Qaeda. Faris says that he never really helped Mohammed, and Faris believes Mohammed fingered him to U.S. interrogators because he saw Faris as “worthless.” |
IOW, not only did the FBI have overseas information allegedly linking Faris to Al Qaeda, but it was only after obtaining the overseas information that the FBI arrested Faris. The report above also makes it clear that the alleged Brooklyn Bridge plot was discovered not because of any warrantless NSA wiretapping but based on "overseas source information that Mr. Faris had been tasked to go and look at the Brooklyn Bridge as a possible target of an attack by Al Qaeda."
This report by the NYTimes verifies this fact:
| quote: |
But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.
Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through interrogation of prisoners or other means.
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By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.
But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/p...agewanted=print |
So did warrantless spying lead to the PREVENTION of the plot to destroy the bridge? Apparently the spying and illegal wiretaps had nothing to do with it in the first place. But furthermore, look at what happened to Faris' plans:
| quote: | But according to the court papers, [Faris] concluded that any plot to destroy the bridge by severing the cables “was very unlikely to succeed because of the bridge’s security and structure.” At that point, he sent a message back to Al Qaeda that “the weather is too hot”—code for the mission was unlikely to succeed.
At the end of the day, if the court papers are to be believed, Faris never actually succeeded in committing any acts of terrorism and his work for the terror group apparently ended in March 2003 with Mohammed’s apprehension. (Sources tell NEWSWEEK that Mohammed did not at first volunteer Faris’s name. But cell phones and computer discs found in Mohammed’s Pakistani safe house enabled U.S. authorities to identify Faris—and a number of other operatives in the United States—and Mohammed eventually confirmed his contacts with the truck driver.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067877/site/newsweek/ |
Now are we gonna sit here and pretend that s like Coulter DIDN'T have access to this information? Can we stop ing playing dumb now? Taking out the ing Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Are we being serious here?
But it is interesting, considering that Faris didn't even get due process:
| quote: | He was secretly arrested in March 2003, charged with plotting to destroy the famous bridge, and held incommunicado for two months.
Then he was made an offer he couldn't refuse: he could either plead guilty and cooperate with the FBI, or President Bush and the Department of Defense would declare him an "enemy combatant."
Once so declared, his criminal case would be terminated without trial, and he would be held incommunicado indefinitely, without access to legal counsel.
Rather than fall into such a purgatory, Faris agreed to plead guilty, sign a statement of "facts," and be sentenced to 20 years.
It was a long sentence, but a 20-year tunnel with light at the end of it was better than the alternative.
Faris told FBI interrogators that the signed statement of "facts" they were going to present to the sentencing judge was a fabrication.
During his public sentencing hearing in October of last year, he interrupted the proceedings to insist, again, that he'd been pressured by prosecutors and agents to sign the false statement of facts.
Faris's frantic pleas went unheeded by the sentencing judge, who went along with the program.
So did Faris's lawyer, former federal prosecutor J. Frederick Sinclair, who cooperated with the feds to draft the plea agreement in which Faris waived every single right, including the right to appeal or even to obtain his case records.
Faris then began serving his sentence.
http://providencephoenix.com/featur...ts/03937899.asp |
Sound familiar? It should. This is how the Administration bolsters it's case for terrorism, when in fact it has no ing facts to support itself. Remember when the White House claimed it disrupted 10 serious Al Qaeda plots, but when pressed it could only come up with 2?:
The first was Jose Padilla, the alleged dirty bomber. But after 2 years in jail without a lawyer, this Administration was unable to claim he was actually behind a dirty bomb plot:
http://www.democracynow.org/article...05/11/23/152219
The second was Faris, who wanted to take down the ing Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches, and realized just how ing stupid he was and backed out himself.
Yeah, Fir3start3r, these are terrific instances of how our Republican Administration is protecting us so well. Here's some more great analysis of your ing heroes:
| quote: | An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people -- not 200, as [White House] officials have implied -- were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.
Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law -- and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows.
For the entire list, the median sentence was just 11 months.
Taken as a whole, the data indicate that the government's effort to identify terrorists in the United States has been less successful than authorities have often suggested...
...Except for a small number of well-known cases -- such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge -- few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States.
Among all the people charged as a result of terrorism probes in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them...
... a large number of people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance -- through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck -- and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared of connections to extremist groups.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...1100381_pf.html |
Back to Faris, he had figured out months earlier that the scheme was silly:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/19/alqaeda.plea/
Furthermore, turns out that Faris is mentally ill. He had heard voices and suffered from hallucinations, and needed meds. once he was in prison:
http://www.namiscc.org/News/2003/Ne...2011-17,%202003
http://people.umass.edu/leg397v/Tru...yn%20Bridge.htm
And you and Coulter have the audacity to complain how the Democrats would do on National Security? Given what we've seen with Bush's ups, and given the fact that the Dems. haven't even been in power yet, what ing relevant argument do you possibly have to bring to the table?
The little twat Coulter ends with this supposed point:
| quote: | The Treason Times reported FISA virtually rubber-stamps warrant requests all the time. As proof, the Times added this irrelevant statistic: In 2004, “1,754 warrants were approved.” No one thought to ask how many requests were rejected.
Over and over we heard how the FISA court never turns down an application for a warrant. USA Today quoted liberal darling and author James Bamford saying: “The FISA court is as big a rubber stamp as you can possibly get within the federal judiciary.” He “wondered why Bush sought the warrantless searches, since the FISA court rarely rejects search requests,” said USA Today.
Put aside the question of why it’s so vitally important to get a warrant from a rubber-stamp court if it’s nothing but an empty formality anyway. After all the ballyhoo about how it was duck soup to get a warrant from FISA, I thought it was pretty big news when it later turned out that the FISA court had been denying warrant requests from the Bush administration like never before. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the FISA court “modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined.”
In the 20 years preceding the attack of 9/11, the FISA court did not modify—much less reject—one single warrant request. But starting in 2001, the judges “modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration.” In the years 2003 and 2004, the court issued 173 “substantive modifications” to warrant requests and rejected or “deferred” six warrant requests outright. |
This somehow supports her ing argument? That Bush's requests were so ing bad that for the first time since FISA was created in '78, and after some tens of thousands of warrant requests in the FISA courts preceeding Bush Jr's. regime in which NOT ONE ING REQUEST WAS TURNED DOWN OR MODIFIED, that now the FISA courts in their wisdom had to have Bush modify his requests?
Well gee, I ing wonder why, Fir3start3r? I wonder why this court after allowing tens of thousands of warrant requests go through without any modifications or rejections, began requesting Bush modify his as well as reject a few on the side? Outside of idiots like you and Coulter who do nothing but support Bush tooth and nail without any criticisms in any manner, and sit there and accuse the opposing party of failing to protect our country WHEN THEY'RE NOT EVEN ING IN POWER TO DO SO, I guess reasonable people (even, *gasp* a healthy number of Republicans including my Senator Brownback) realize that Bush is likely overstepping his bounds.
And again I want an answer to this simple question: given everything that I've just covered, explain to me how illegally wiretapping American citizens somehow protects us versus obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER starting a wiretap on alleged Al Qaeda suspects.
You want to bring an argument to me, I suggest you have better sources than Coulter. |
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| Dale Gribble |
from one oldfart to another YOU ROCK! well done!
I won`t even bother the Ann-`the c u n t -Coulter, and the sad thing is there are alot of people who will take her crap a FACT.
again thanks for the great post! |
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| tiesto14 |
Most people all over this are talking out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they are bashing the president for his failure to do more before 9.11. On the other hand, the sort of things that the president could have done to prevent this, are precisely the sorts of things that these selfsame critics oppose, on civil liberties grounds.
Many Americans seem to want it both ways. They want their privacy and don't want their government spying on them, but at the same time they seem to want a guarantee that something like 9/11 won't happen again. |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
Many Americans seem to want it both ways. They want their privacy and don't want their government spying on them, but at the same time they seem to want a guarantee that something like 9/11 won't happen again. |
I don't. Honestly, if someone wants to commit another terrorist attack like 9/11, it really wouldn't be that difficult to accomplish even with all of Bush's civil liberty-infringing actions. I mean, how hard is it for a small dedicated group of terrorists to attack again without much.
People want the perception of security and safety, even if the reality is that it's not possible. It's sad, because they're giving away rights and liberties that will take a long time to regain (if ever) in their attempt to perceive that they're safe.
BTW, what will Bush and his cronies say if something like 9/11 happens and their spying and other questionable activities didn't thwart it? |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
Most people all over this are talking out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they are bashing the president for his failure to do more before 9.11. On the other hand, the sort of things that the president could have done to prevent this, are precisely the sorts of things that these selfsame critics oppose, on civil liberties grounds. |
I didn't realize that it was too much to ask this President, or any President for that matter, to rightfully protect us WITHOUT violating our Constitutional rights and civil liberties.
What a concept.
| quote: | | Many Americans seem to want it both ways. They want their privacy and don't want their government spying on them, but at the same time they seem to want a guarantee that something like 9/11 won't happen again. |
Good, well maybe you can answer my question for me, since you seem to believe that it's all hunky dory to have our civil liberties infringed upon:
"given everything that I've just covered, explain to me how illegally wiretapping American citizens somehow protects us versus obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER starting a wiretap on alleged Al Qaeda suspects."
Can you help me out with that one? Can you tell me how wiretapping Americans ILLEGALLY without a warrant rather than Al Qaeda members somehow protects us better versus legally obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER the initial wiretap? |
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| tiesto14 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I didn't realize that it was too much to ask this President, or any President for that matter, to rightfully protect us WITHOUT violating our Constitutional rights and civil liberties.
What a concept.
Good, well maybe you can answer my question for me, since you seem to believe that it's all hunky dory to have our civil liberties infringed upon:
"given everything that I've just covered, explain to me how illegally wiretapping American citizens somehow protects us versus obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER starting a wiretap on alleged Al Qaeda suspects."
Can you help me out with that one? Can you tell me how wiretapping Americans ILLEGALLY without a warrant rather than Al Qaeda members somehow protects us better versus legally obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER the initial wiretap? |
dunno...but if you think this secret crap started with Bush you better think again...it has been going on for decades. So you tell me why now it seems to be such an issue. Wasnt "carnivore program" used under Clinton? Now who has the double standards.
Now let me ask you a question...hypothetically -
Say we had a chance to listen in on Atta 2 hours before he boarded his flight on 9.11, that would of given us percise details to stop 9.11...would you of been against that wire tap because it could of violated an innocent American's rights? And dont give me some mixed up answer...it is a straight forward question that deserves a straight forward answer of yes or no. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
dunno...but if you think this secret crap started with Bush you better think again...it has been going on for decades. So you tell me why now it seems to be such an issue. Wasnt "carnivore program" used under Clinton? Now who has the double standards.
Now let me ask you a question...hypothetically -
Say we had a chance to listen in on Atta 2 hours before he boarded his flight on 9.11, that would of given us percise details to stop 9.11...would you of been against that wire tap because it could of violated an innocent American's rights? And dont give me some mixed up answer...it is a straight forward question that deserves a straight forward answer of yes or no. |
Let me ask you something hypothetically, say we have a presidential daily brief that warns the president of an imminent attack from al qaeda. Now say that President actually takes such information seriously. And in doing so we come to realization that there is an enormous amount of information, at our disposal, that is completely relevant and indicative of an attack, may I remind you this information is ALREADY at our disposal (without hte need to break THE LAW) towards averting a terrorist attack. Hypothetically speaking of course ... shouldn't we demand more efficient government as opposed to rewarding incompetance with relaxed protections to accomodate their stupidity??? I thought you were a conservative :conf:?
Btw the "but Clinton!!!! ..." argument is no justification for current incompetance. Are you really trying to stoop to that leve? |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
dunno... |
Thank you for your honesty.
| quote: | | but if you think this secret crap started with Bush you better think again...it has been going on for decades. So you tell me why now it seems to be such an issue. Wasnt "carnivore program" used under Clinton? Now who has the double standards. |
I'm unaware of any ILLEGAL proceedings involving wiretaps or secret spying with Clinton. In fact, especially involving FISA laws, the AP now confirms that Clinton acted legally, dispelling any notions given by Gonzales and this Administration otherwise:
http://www.forbes.com/business/manu.../ap2456266.html
| quote: | Now let me ask you a question...hypothetically -
Say we had a chance to listen in on Atta 2 hours before he boarded his flight on 9.11, that would of given us percise details to stop 9.11...would you of been against that wire tap because it could of violated an innocent American's rights? And dont give me some mixed up answer...it is a straight forward question that deserves a straight forward answer of yes or no. |
Not at all, why would I be against it? I see no reason why our intelligence couldn't have obtained a warrant on whatever given phone up to 72 hours after the initial wiretap in this scenario. Can you think of a reason? Again I ask:
"given everything that I've just covered, explain to me how illegally wiretapping American citizens somehow protects us versus obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER starting a wiretap on alleged Al Qaeda suspects."
IOW, why would you believe that we could not obtain evidence under our current FISA laws legally when we have a 72 hour window RETROACTIVELY (after the initial wiretap) to obtain such a warrant?
And furthermore, if the subject was an Al Qaeda suspect, who wasn't an American citizen BTW, why would we jump to such a conclusion that we WOULDN'T be able to somehow obtain a legal wiretap on the guy? The FISA courts would in all likelihood look at that case and wouldn't even blink on giving our government a warrant for such a case.
So I don't think your instance is a very good one, let alone a valid one. |
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| tiesto14 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Let me ask you something hypothetically, say we have a presidential daily brief that warns the president of an imminent attack from al qaeda. Now say that President actually takes such information seriously. And in doing so we come to realization that there is an enormous amount of information, at our disposal, that is completely relevant and indicative of an attack, may I remind you this information is ALREADY at our disposal (without hte need to break THE LAW) towards averting a terrorist attack. Hypothetically speaking of course ... shouldn't we demand more efficient government as opposed to rewarding incompetance with relaxed protections to accomodate their stupidity??? I thought you were a conservative :conf:? |
confused me:conf: :p |
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| tiesto14 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Thank you for your honesty.
I'm unaware of any ILLEGAL proceedings involving wiretaps or secret spying with Clinton. In fact, especially involving FISA laws, the AP now confirms that Clinton acted legally, dispelling any notions given by Gonzales and this Administration otherwise:
http://www.forbes.com/business/manu.../ap2456266.html
Not at all, why would I be against it? I see no reason why our intelligence couldn't have obtained a warrant on whatever given phone up to 72 hours after the initial wiretap in this scenario. Can you think of a reason? Again I ask:
"given everything that I've just covered, explain to me how illegally wiretapping American citizens somehow protects us versus obtaining a warrant up to 72 hours AFTER starting a wiretap on alleged Al Qaeda suspects."
IOW, why would you believe that we could not obtain evidence under our current FISA laws legally when we have a 72 hour window RETROACTIVELY (after the initial wiretap) to obtain such a warrant?
And furthermore, if the subject was an Al Qaeda suspect, who wasn't an American citizen BTW, why would we jump to such a conclusion that we WOULDN'T be able to somehow obtain a legal wiretap on the guy? The FISA courts would in all likelihood look at that case and wouldn't even blink on giving our government a warrant for such a case.
So I don't think your instance is a very good one, let alone a valid one. |
you convinced me....i never really understood the 72 hour window till now...now i know why i stopped posting in here...lol...i made myself look dumb.
So i guess i agree with you on this.
BUT Clinton is still a tool:p |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
confused me:conf: :p |
You posted a hypothetical question whereby we may have had an opportunity to avert the 9/11 attacks by illegally listening in on terrorist converstaions with wiretaps. Thereby you are insinuating that the wiretaps may be necessary to avoid terrorist attacks. I insinuated that we may have had factual evidence at our disposal to avert the 9/11 attacks without the need to BREAK ANY LAWS. And by may have had I mean we did. Thus we don't need to reward stupidity (which seems to be the new republican mantra) by relaxing our expectations ... we need to demand MORE from our governemnt with what we give them. And what we give them is quite sufficient. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by tiesto14
you convinced me....i never really understood the 72 hour window till now...now i know why i stopped posting in here...lol...i made myself look dumb.
So i guess i agree with you on this.
BUT Clinton is still a tool:p |
No argument from me on that one.
Thanks again for your honesty. There are a wide number of issues that I think are worth debating with this Administration. I just don't see this one being one of them. It just doesn't make sense to me, or to even a lot of Republicans for that matter. |
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