Monthly Archives: January 2008

Political wind, Terrorist Surveillance Program

Kennedy and Dodd cannot prove domestic spying

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Update, 12:25 PM EST (see note at the end of this post)

Here is the fear many politicians are attempting to plant in American minds about the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP): our government is conducting wholesale, domestic spying on the populace’s communications, “Big Brother” is spying on us all. It is a flat out lie.

Yet because the program is highly classified, soup to nut fear mongers — Senator Ted Kennedy to Congressman Ron Paul — can allege it without offering one example of proof, and the administration cannot roll out the program for the public to view to prove them wrong. The allegation of domestic spying stands alone, unproven and undisputed, and is the perfect storm for those seeking to undermine our national security for political gain.

Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz reported this morning:

“There is no evidence to substantiate claims about warrantless spying on Americans prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” the report stated. “Nor is there any evidence to substantiate the claim that the TSP covered domestic calls between friends, neighbors and loved ones. As the president has stated, the TSP involved the collection of international calls involving members of al Qaeda.” [Editor — The report came from the office of Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Missouri Republican and the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.]

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said during the floor debate last month that the surveillance program spied on innocent Americans. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, also said then that any surveillance without a court order undermines “our democratic society.”

But the report stated that “warrantless surveillance for foreign intelligence collection has been an integral part of our nation’s foreign intelligence gathering. During World War II, our warrantless surveillance of the German and Japanese militaries and the breaking of their codes preserved our democracy.
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The staff report said critics of the surveillance program claim it should have been carried out under FISA rules. However, it stated that a decision by a surveillance court judge last year “proved that the TSP could not be done under FISA as it existed at that time.”

“This decision resulted in significant intelligence gaps and led to the need for, and passage of, the Protect America Act,” the report said.
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Democratic critics also have said the FISA law is the only permitted basis for conducting electronic surveillance, but the report stated that the Constitution “trumps any statute.”

“It is false to suggest that the president has no inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes because Congress tried to limit it in FISA,” the report stated.

There is evidence that the FISA law inhibited the rescue operation of three soldiers kidnapped in Iraq by al Qaeda last year.

Senators Kennedy and Dodd have yet to refute the evidence that their perfect storm is getting our soldiers killed. If asked, they will likely claim they cannot discuss the details of that classified operation, proving my point that their allegation of domestic spying is scurrilous and the TSP is only being used to target the enemy.

Update: I spoke with Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA, 9th District) this morning who stated that a senior military officer had briefed him and confirmed the search for the three kidnapped US soldiers was delayed by more than nine hours while waiting for a FISA warrant.

antiwar, New York Times, Support our troops, War on Terror

New York Times’ smear certainly wasn’t an accident: Ralph Peters

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Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters’ column in the New York Post this morning The New ‘Lepers’ tells of what motivated the New York Times to smear our troops this past Sunday. While “crazed” killers and criminals within the ranks of veterans and current military are few compared to America’s civilian populace, the Times morphed beyond the political as it willfully failed to acknowledge that fact for all this War on Terror:

I’VE had a huge response to Tuesday’s column about The New York Times’ obscene bid to smear veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as mad killers. Countless readers seem to be wondering: Why did the paper do it?

Well, in the Middle Ages, lepers had to carry bells on pain of death to warn the uninfected they were coming. One suspects that the Times would like our military veterans to do the same.

The purpose of Sunday’s instantly notorious feature “alerting” the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as “unclean” — as the new lepers who can’t be trusted amid uninfected Americans.

In the more than six years since 9/11, the Times has never run a feature story half as long on any of the hundreds of heroes who’ve served our country — those who’ve won medals of honor, distinguished service crosses, Navy crosses, silver stars or bronze stars with a V device (for valor) [Editor — Actually, more than 4,000 of our nation’s top six medals for the heroism of our troops have been awarded since 9/11, as I detailed on this web site on October 20, 2007].

But the Times put a major investigative effort into the “sensational” story that 121 returning vets had committed capital offenses (of course, 20 percent of the cases cited involved manslaughter charges stemming from drunken driving, not first- or second-degree murder … ).
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The Times is trying to make you fear our veterans (Good Lord, if your daughter marries one, she’s bound to be beaten to death!). And to convince you that our military would be a dreadful place for your sons and daughters, a death-machine that would turn them into incurable psychopaths.

To a darkly humorous degree, all this reflects the Freudian terrors leftists feel when confronted with men who don’t have concave chests. But it goes far beyond that.

Pretending to pity tormented veterans (vets don’t want our pity — they want our respect), the Times’ feature was an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service.

The image we all were supposed to take away from that story was of hopelessly damaged, victimized, infected human beings who’ve become outcasts from civilized society. The Times cast our vets as freaks from a slasher flick.

The hard left’s hatred of our military has deteriorated from a political stance into a pathology: The only good soldier is a dead soldier who can be wielded as a statistic (out of context again). Or a deserter who complains bitterly that he didn’t join the Army to fight … READ THE REST.

Without boring you with my full resume, I am also U.S. Army retired and served as a Military Policeman during much of the same period as LTC Peters goes on to describe. Yes, there was crime yet the rates were but a fraction of that of the civilian world. Nearly all served with honor and today’s troops are no different.

Support our troops!