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This is great:
Justice Department Opens NSA Spy Leak Probe
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of information to the media about a domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency, senior Justice Department officials confirmed Friday.
People leaking state secrets to the media need to be identified and punished.
Hillary Clinton Blasts Bush 'Spy' Program:
2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has finally broken her silence on the Bush administration National Security Agency program that conducts surveillance on suspected terrorists based in the U.S. - saying that she opposes spying on "Americans."
Hillary evidently wants to see if she can get the terrorist vote. She is offended by any effort to encroach on the civil rights of people who want to kill us. She takes a high moral stance on this subject:
She also observed that "the values that made America in the 20th century not just the economic leader of the world, but the moral leader of the world are under attack today."
Considering the danger terrorists present to all Americans, Hillary's statement on this is not distinguishable from madness.
Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA's Bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, states that secret CIA prisons on foreign soil were initiated under Bill Clinton -- not, as the Washington Post had claimed, under GWB.
Ex-CIA Big: Bill Clinton Authorized Extralegal Interrogations
The man who ran the Central Intelligence Agency's Bin Laden desk during the 1990s is accusing President Clinton of giving the CIA carte blanche to circumvent U.S. law and interrogate terrorist suspects in any way the agency saw fit - a directive that led to the establishment of secret CIA prisons on foreign soil.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture," recalled Michael Scheuer, who headed up the agency's Bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, in an interview Wednesday with the German newsmagazine Die Zeit.
Scheuer said Clinton replied: "That's up to you."
According to an Agence France Press summary of the Die Zeit interview, Scheuer explained that the Clinton administration "had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system."
The top Bin Laden hunter recalled that the extralegal directive came after "President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda."
It's notable that Clinton said, "That's up to you," -- making sure that he could blame anything that was actually done on somebody else.
It's also notable that Clinton found the US legal system "cumbersome" in attempts to fight terrorists. Of course it is. The US legal system is designed to protect the accused as much as possible. For the US government to try that on an organized group that's trying to kill Americans, would greatly increase the danger they present to the American people.
From Victor Davis Hanson:
So we have forgotten that most of us after 9/11 would never have imagined that the United States would remain untouched for over four years after that awful cloud of ash settled over the crater at the World Trade Center.
Now the horror of 9/11 and the sight of the doomed diving into the street fade. Gone mostly are the flags on the cars, and the orange and red alerts. The Democrats and the Left, in their amnesia, and as beneficiaries of the very policies they suddenly abhor, now mention al Qaeda very little and Islamic fascism hardly at all.
...Few stop to reflect how different a Pakistan is as a neutral rather than as the embryo of the Taliban, or a Libya without a nuclear-weapons program, or a Lebanon with Syrians in it, or an Iraq without Saddam and Afghanistan without Mullah Omar. That someone - mostly soldiers in the field and diplomats under the most trying of circumstances - accomplished all that is either unknown or forgotten as we ready ourselves for the next scandal.
Precisely because we are winning this war and have changed the contour of the Middle East, we expect even more - and ever more quickly, without cost in lives or treasure. So rather than stopping to praise and commemorate those who gave us our success, we can only rush ahead to destroy those who do not give us even more.
From Mark Steyn:
It was famously said that the Vietnam War was lost on television. In this instance, the Iraq War’s being lost only on television. In Iraq, it’s a tremendous victory. Indeed, it has the potential to be one of the most consequential, transformative victories of the modern age; but even if it doesn’t ever fulfill that potential, it’s still a huge success.
What we've accomplished in Iraq -- freeing millions of people from a terrorist-supporting, brutally repressive dictator -- is likely to have favorable effects on the Mid-East, not only in the present, but for centuries.
It's astonishing how, even today, Liberals reading this will see that I've described Hussein as a "terrorist-supporting dictator" and scoff. As noted here previously, Hussein had a long history of supporting terrorism:
CIA Analysis, January 2003: Iraqi Support for Terrorism,* (p. 314 of Senate Intel Report):
“Iraq has a long history of supporting terrorism.”CIA Analysis, January 2003—Iraqi Support for Terrorism, (p. 314 of Senate Intel Report):
“Iraq continues to be a safehaven, transit point, or operational node for groups and individuals who direct violence against the United States, Israel and other allies.”Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 315):
“The CIA provided 78 reports, from multiple sources, [redacted] documenting instances in which the Iraqi regime either trained operatives for attacks or dispatched them to carry out attacks.”Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
“Iraq continued to participate in terrorist attacks throughout the 1990s.”Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
“From 1996 to 2003, the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel.”Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
“Throughout 2002, the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against U.S. interests. The CIA provided eight reports to support this assessment.”
Deposing Saddam and freeing the Iraqi people have made Americans safer.
Anyone who's studied film knows that if you want to make someone look heroic, you shoot them from a low angle, so they look ten feet tall -- like this:
That AP photo of Hillary is on the NY Times' web site today.
When was the last time the NY Times published a photo like that of GWB?
It's a common criticism made by the Left, that the U.S. contributed to the existence of Islamic dictatorships by supporting dictators in decades past. Per Victor Davis Hanson :
One, oil thirst increasingly became the overriding consideration, even in areas like Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, where there was very little petroleum, but enough instability to affect the larger allegiance of Islamic oil-exporting nations. Earlier rivalry among Western nations had morphed into collective fear of the ever-growing Chinese-energy appetite — always colored by the specter of past oil boycotts, shooting at tankers in the Gulf, and perennial terrorist threats against the oilfields. So if a nation pumped oil, then its government avoided scrutiny.
Two, anti-Communism was another stimulus, specifically the effort to keep the Soviet Union and its satellites from controlling the Persian Gulf, or using their Baathist surrogates to promote petrol-fed anti-Western terrorism. Much of the mess of the Middle East today derives from a Soviet-style, unworkable, amoral state apparatus imposed upon a traditional tribal society at various times in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen — and our own desperation to support any unsavory autocrat who would stop such Communists. So if a strongman fought Communists, he was O.K. with us.
However, similar behavior can be seen among Liberals today, who do everything they can to prevent such dictators from being overthrown.
They oppose the war in Iraq, which deposed Hussein.
They shout that 'we cannot win in Iraq' and that our troops are 'terrorizing' Iraqis.
They criticize the bringing of Democracy to Iraq:
In perhaps the stupidest move in American political history, the mainstream Democratic party got suckered into buying Howard Dean’s shady investments in American failure — and so turned its back on the Iraqi democratic experiment hours before millions went to the polls in that country’s third and most successful free election.
Now that Iraq has had successful Democratic elections, instead of praising GWB's policies, they ignore them. As Hanson puts it:
Why still no big-font, front-page headlines screaming, “Millions Vote in Historic Middle East Election!” or “Democracy Comes At Last To Iraq” or “America’s Push for Iraqi Democracy Working”?
The Left has little ground to criticize a past U.S. policy, that the Left itself is currently following.
Last January, this site noted reports of how 10-year-old Tilly Smith had saved 100 people on a beach where the tsunami was about to hit:
Tilly shrugged off the attention and modestly said, "Last term, my geography teacher, Mr. Kearney, taught us about earthquakes and how they can cause tsunamis.
Today Tilly, now 11, has been honored :
11-year-old who warned tourists of danger is honoured
Tilly Smith, from Oxshott, Surrey, was on a beach in Phuket with her family on Boxing Day last year when she noticed the sea change in temperament and was reminded of a geography lesson she had attended shortly before the Christmas break.
Convinced she was witnessing the warning signs of a tsunami, Tilly raised the alarm with her parents and hotel staff, and the beach was vacated minutes before the waves struck. She said she had seen "bubbling on the water ... and foam sizzling just like in a frying pan."Her efforts are thought to have resulted in ensuring the safety of the 100-plus people on the beach, and have now been credited by the French children's magazine, Mon Quotidien, whose readers have voted her Child of the Year. Tilly said: "I'm very glad I was able to say on the beach that a tsunami was coming. And I'm glad they listened to me."
I would like to see her teacher honored as well, for describing the warning signs of a tsunami so vividly that Tilly was able to recognize them.
NORAD Tracks Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
FISA Court Discouraged Moussaoui Warrant:
Led by the New York Times, a chorus of administration critics have been insisting all week that there was no reason for President Bush to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when he sought to wiretap terrorists operating inside the U.S. - since the FISA Court almost always approves such requests.
But that's not what the Times reported three years ago, after FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley came forward with the allegation that the Bureau might have been able to stop the 9/11 attacks if only investigators had been allowed access to the laptop computer of suspected 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui.
Moussaoui was arrested in Minneapolis on Aug. 16, 2001 - nearly four weeks before the 9/11 attacks - after an instructor at a local flight school he attended called the F.B.I. to report that he suspected the Moroccan-born terrorist was up to no good.
In a May 2002 report the Times noted: "Two days later, F.B.I. agents in Minnesota asked Washington to obtain a special warrant to search his laptop computer."
But FISA had disciplined the F.B.I. supervisor in charge of terrorist surveillance operations -- harming his career -- and making the FBI cautious about applying to FISA!
"Recent interviews of intelligence officials by The New York Times suggest that the Bureau had a reason for growing cautious about applying to a secret national security court for special search warrants that might have supplied critical information."
"The F.B.I.," officials told the Times, "had become wary after a well-regarded supervisor was disciplined because the [FISA] court complained that he had submitted improper information on applications."
The secret court went so far as to discipline Michael Resnick, the F.B.I. supervisor in charge of coordinating terrorist surveillance operations, saying they would no longer accept warrant applications from him.Intelligence officials told the Times that the FISA Court's decision to reprimand Resnick, who had been a rising star in the FBI, "resulted in making the Bureau far less aggressive in seeking information on terrorists."
..."Other officials," the paper said, complained that the FISA Court's actions against Resnick "prompted Bureau officials to adopt a play-it-safe approach that meant submitting fewer applications and declining to submit any that could be questioned."
...In a January 2002 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, [Sen. Charles] Grassley noted that had a search been permitted, "Agents would have found information in Moussaoui's belongings that linked him both to a major financier of the [9/11] hijacking plot working out of Germany, and to a Malaysian Al Qaeda boss who had met with at least two other [9/11] hijackers while under surveillance by intelligence officials."
This 2002 NY Times story shows that FISA is not only incapable of acting in such cases so as to save American lives -- its inability to do so led directly to the 9-11 attack itself.
And yet the NY Times -- and some Liberals -- want the U.S. to be forced to rely on FISA for permission to spy on terrorists communicating to or from the U.S. This would be very likely to lead to further killings of Americans by terrorists.
Several commenters have posted, making the point that (in the words of commenter Chuck Hagel):
No president is above the law. We are a nation of laws and no president, majority leader, or chief justice of the Supreme Court can unilaterally or arbitrarily avoid a law or dismiss a law.
This is certainly true. But there is great doubt, to say the least, that GWB broke the law. From John Schmidt, who was associate attorney general of the United States, under President Clinton from 1994 to 1997:
President had legal authority to OK taps
President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.
The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.
My question for these commenters is this: would you be willing to argue in favor of having laws that would prevent the United States from spying on the conversations of terrorists who are trying to kill Americans?
YOU GOTTA LOVE SCRAPPLEFACE: "Qaeda Relocates to U.S. for Spy-Free Calling. "
Dick Morris is as concerned as I am (per my post yesterday) about the NY Times story that betrayed state secrets to terrorists who are seeking to kill Americans. He calls for an investigation into who leaked the story to the Times:
The current leak, however, of classified material relating to National Security Agency tactics in intercepting conversations between people abroad and those within the United States is a vastly serious proposition that may have materially compromised investigations in progress and tipped terrorists off to our methods so that they can hide among us undetected.
This leak, far more than the Valerie Plame incident, deserves a full investigation to identify who spilled the beans and to whom and how. The consequences of this leak alone merit an independent investigation and, perhaps, a trial for treason.
The bias of MSM against GWB in this case has hampered efforts to save American lives. The investigation Morris recommends should be conducted.
Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in 1 1/2 Years
WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy turned in a remarkably strong performance in the summer despite surging energy prices and the battering the Gulf Coast states took from hurricanes, although business growth was slightly lower than the government previously estimated. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services, rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the July-September quarter. It was the fastest pace of growth in 1 1/2 years.
... The increase in third quarter growth came despite the fact that the country was hit by Katrina, the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, and by Rita.
See also these previous posts:
The Tax Cuts Worked-Economic Expansion: Year Five
The Bush Tax Cuts Have Resulted in Higher Tax Revenue
Lower Taxes Make the Economy Stronger
Lower Tax Rates Are Resulting In Higher Tax Revenue
A Myth Debunked: Bush Tax Cuts Did Not Favor the Rich
Tax Cuts Work: Government Forecasting Incorrectly Thought Tax Costs Would Reduce Tax Revenue
