Bush and his comments.

[slakjaw]

I would like to call him George W. Nixon

He said,
Hey I know I broke the law there, but it was for your own good.
**
The end does not justify the means.

Rush was frustrating today as well. To hear people use their best defense “well…. Clinton did it too” That is no defense. Like two wrongs make a right? If your defense is that Clinton did it too you really have no defense. Nor should that be considered an excuse.

Bush was more upset that someone leaked the story than he was about doing something wrong.

We are a nation of laws, not a nation of personalities.

He said,
“It was a shameful act that someone disclosed this information during a time of war”
It was a shameful act when Bush and the members of congress broke the law.
If we are truly a nation of laws, what your telling me is that our country does not work.
Damn the courts damn the laws of this country!

Why is the leak of the information a shameful act?

Shame on the members of congress for just blindly going along with this crime.

We are supposed to live in a free country, if we are not living in a free country JUST TELL ME! Don’t lead me on OK. That’s all I ask.

I know we are fighting a war on terror, Does that mean we have to give up our way of life?

[Superman]

I saw yesterday a video snippet of Dubya proclaiming that we didn't "lose" the Iraq thing. He reminded viewers that Americans don't think we lost. Soldiers there don't think we lost. Iraqis don't think we lost. So, we didn't lose.

Now who, other than a loser, tries to convince you that they didn't lose?

[kach22i]

Originally posted by Superman
Now who, other than a loser, tries to convince you that they didn't lose?

I remember when I was a kid, I beat this punk who challenged me - a bunch of his friends were witnesses. The next time I saw him he tried to convince me and others that I did not beat him. So I beat him again, he was a lot friendlier after that - still a trouble making punk though.

[slakjaw]

bump

[Tim Hancock]

If you can't figure out how alerting the terrorists that their conversations are being monitored by Uncle Sam is a shameful act, then no one on this board is going to be able to help you.

[slakjaw]

Originally posted by Tim Hancock
If you can't figure out how alerting the terrorists that their conversations are being monitored by Uncle Sam is a shameful act, then no one on this board is going to be able to help you.

Is it shameful to do it without the public knowing? Is it shameful to do it without going through the steps?

Once again, are we a nation of laws or not?

[on-ramp]

Originally posted by slakjaw
Is it shameful to do it without the public knowing? Is it shameful to do it without going through the steps?

Once again, are we a nation of laws or not?

we are a nation of laws only when it's convenient to a very few..

if you lie to your government, you go to jail, but when our government lies to us, we go to war.

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by on-ramp

if you lie to your government, you go to jail, but when our government lies to us, we go to war.

Half true: Clinton got away with lying to the government, consistently. We did bomb Serbia because of lies, lies to distract the nation away from Clinton's indiscretions.

[Tim Hancock]

Originally posted by slakjaw
Is it shameful to do it without the public knowing? Is it shameful to do it without going through the steps?

Once again, are we a nation of laws or not?

Yeah, I guess your right, the nightly news, when reporting such things just needs to say...... "If you are a terrorist, please turn your volume down for a moment while we tell the American public how we are going to catch you so you will be unable to launch another attack on America. Thank you for understanding. After we give our law abiding citizens a full disclosure intelligence briefing, please feel free to continue watching as next up, we will show a some video clips of some of your buddies getting humiliated in prison."

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by slakjaw
Why is the leak of the information a shameful act?

We are supposed to live in a free country, if we are not living in a free country JUST TELL ME! Don’t lead me on OK. That’s all I ask.

I know we are fighting a war on terror, Does that mean we have to give up our way of life?

Tim is correct, the minute its out in the open how we watch the bad guys, they will know what is going on and to use another means of communication. We have usually been tracking the terrorists by two things, the flow of money and communications.

OBL has stopped using his satellite phone after he figured out that we were tracking it. Face it, there are not too many people in the Hindu Kush with a sat phone, so when we find a signal coming from that area, its not difficult to track 2-3 people using one there. Narrow it down to these people and we had found him at one time. Unfortunately the unmanned drone overhead was a older version without any missles onboard. We have some very nice video of OBL walking with his people and thats all we have.

We are the good guys and do as much "above board" as possible but the people who are trying to kill us are not playing by the rules so its a whole different ballgame.

Someday people like you will get it. You are halfway there now. WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR and in war you give up anything needed to win, period.

The option is losing and then we would get to wake up at 05:00 to pray to Allah by taking our shoes off, washing our hands and feet, and facing Mecca on a prayer rug, then 10:00 to pray again, next prayer time is 14:30, followed by one at 17:00 and the last one at 19:15 at night. You stop any and all other religion because Islam forbids it and do not even think of eating pork or having a drink at night, its illegal. You will marry whoever your parents say, and you usually meet your wife to be a few hours before the marriage.

Once a year you have Ramadan, where you wake early, pray then gorge yourselves on food before sunrise. The entire waking day you cannot eat, only try to work and pray. Then after the sun goes down (and of course after praying for the 5th time that day) you get to eat again. You stay up late eating until you are stuffed then back to sleep as you have to wake up in 4 hours to pray and eat again. This goes on for 30 days until you hit Eid, and can eat normally again for 11 months.

We do live in a free country. We all, at this time, have the freedom to say or type anything we want to on this and any other forum or in person. For the last 2 days that I have been out of Saudi Arabia I have been able to type anything I wanted to. Before that all of my posts were censored if I was on a non-secure link because they do not allow free speech in that country, the headquarters of the Islamic religion. Every phone call and internet access is monitored, every frigging call. You are in a police state there.

If a lot of people do not realize that we are at war, and continue acting like nothing is going on and these killers get a bigger foothold in our country (and believe me, they are here now) then life will get even more interesting. Its then called martial law and any and all of your freedoms will go out the window until we kill each and every one of these people who declared war on America 20 years ago. Do not know how many more wake up calls you guys need, but they are actively trying to end America and what she stands for right now.

Joe A

[DaveE]

There is a legal process in place, a secret court to get a warrant quickly to do what Bush wanted. He decided he was above the law, that he could make the decision himself. He made this a story, not the press, not the leaker. This would never have been a story if he'd followed the process.

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by DaveE
There is a legal process in place, a secret court to get a warrant quickly to do what Bush wanted. He decided he was above the law, that he could make the decision himself. He made this a story, not the press, not the leaker. This would never have been a story if he'd followed the process.

This wouldn't have been a story if the New York Times didn't hate Bush, or James Reisen didn't have a book that was coming out. This is not a story, other than the leak of classified information intended to harm a sitting President, compromising our intelligence gathering capabilities. What Bush has done is no different than any President before him.

[Tim Hancock]

I don't like the idea of big brother watching my every move but after 9/11, knowing that there are pshyco path towel heads plotting even larger strikes, I say do what it takes to stop them!

The same people b!tching about this will be the same ones b!tching that Bush should have done more after we get attacked again. PATHETIC!
Stopping terrorism at home should not marginalized by adding politics into the mix. I guess some people have shrugged off the horror of 9/11.

[vash]

easy tim, i only dream of the future when i can shrug the horror. believe me, i am all about fire and brimstone. BUT, you cant go manipulating the system and hide behind the "eff terrorism" shield. you have to have rules and method of checks and balances for a system like ours. if you dont, all credibility gets turned to schit. imagine if the authorities use this to look at all the citizens. life would be hell.

find the badguys legally, and THEN mess them up bad.

[IROC]

Originally posted by vash
find the badguys legally, and THEN mess them up bad.

Absolutely. You have to play by the rules. If you don't like the rules, change them. Legally. That's the way things work. Don't like the way things work? Hate it.

I think this situation constitutes not playing by the rules. It doesn't matter to me if someone tries to reassure me by saying "oh, but we have your best interests in mind". I'm not buying it. Play by the rules.

Mike

[lendaddy]

The point is that these guys think Bush broke the law and he didn't have to in order to accomplish the exact same results. This is a fair argument. Bush and Clinton both argued that they have this power and the acts are not illegal.

So you have a debate, not a crime.

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by IROC
Absolutely. You have to play by the rules. If you don't like the rules, change them. Legally. That's the way things work. Don't like the way things work? Hate it.

I think this situation constitutes not playing by the rules. It doesn't matter to me if someone tries to reassure me by saying "oh, but we have your best interests in mind". I'm not buying it. Play by the rules.

Mike

This issue isn't about breaking the rules or not. This is an issue about bashing Bush to drive down his poll numbers. In this case made much more egregious because our safety is at risk and sensitive intelligence gathering practices are illegally being disclosed to our enemies...The activist media are glad to run with what they know is a contrived story manufactured to slander Bush.

[island_dude]

Just to clear up a misconception that I think is developing here. The NSA, CIA etc. are chartered to collect against non US citizens overseas (and even in selected cases domestically). Joe seems to think to imply that we are giving this capability up by invoking the FISA process or even mentioning it. First off, FISA doesn't apply to those activities. Secondly, No one is giving away the technical means by which they are doing any of this.

To top this off, here is the rub. If you use your cell phone some place and then shortly afterward it seems like the US knows where you are, and this happens a few times, wouldn't you figure out that you were being monitored?

In the domestic monitoring case, I don't see how it harms us that it has been reported that process wasn't followed. How does this tip off the bad guys? We have a process that allows the targets to be monitored that simple requires the court order after the fact.

Len, I have to agree with you its a fair debate. We don't have all of the facts about what was or was not done.

[Tobra]

What was the damage when Valerie Plame was "outed"?(aside from the political damage to the current administration)

Okay now, what was the damage when it was reported that OBL was being tracked by his Satellite Phone?

What damage is done to our intelligence gathering ability when the NY Times publishes a story they discovered a year ago on the eve of the Iraqui elections about wiretaps of overseas calls?

Who would be on the spot if something similar to this had happened in 1944?

It harms our effectiveness when our opponents know the tactics we are using. OBL stopped using his Satellite phone, they quit talking about things we want to know on lines we can access. I cannot understand how someone could not see that this harms the effectiveness of our intelligence gathering

[911pcars]

"What was the damage when Valerie Plame was "outed"?(aside from the political damage to the current administration)"

I suppose while she was undercover she was in contact with various overseas personnel who were themselves covert and would pass along vital security information. Since Plame has been identified, it's just a simple matter to back track who her contacts were and identify them as loose-lipped spys. You can fill in what happens to them next. Sounds like an effective method of reducing the number of intelligence-gathering contacts to me. That was the damage. Did you ever speak with Valerie Plame? It was nice knowing you.

"Okay now, what was the damage when it was reported that OBL was being tracked by his Satellite Phone?

That depends on the time span between tracking OBL and the public reporting of this. Can you verify this? If the reporting was of a past event, then I think the onus is on the guy who controlled the red button, don't you?

"What damage is done to our intelligence gathering ability when the NY Times publishes a story they discovered a year ago on the eve of the Iraqui elections about wiretaps of overseas calls?"

I think it tells these guys who might think of breaking the law to get a court order first - just like the law requires. BTW, next time, the NSA shouldn't bother asking AG Alberto Gonzalez about this or the legality of torture and false imprisonment. He doesn't care about the Constitution either. He should have sworn allegiance to the flag instead of to his boss.

Imagine if we were in a long-term state of declared "war". The administration, by it's own admission and self-proclaimed right, can subvert any law if it fits into their criteria of national security. How many of these rights do you guys want to give up today? How many tomorrow and the next day? This might bring out more emotion if they were talking about identifying everyone with a firearm. Last I looked, the right to bear arms is one of those bendable rules in that document too.

Sherwood