Andrew McCarthy has a brilliant piece in National Review Online on the NSA wiretapping “scandal”. He puts the real crux of this matter plainly:
We are either at war or we are not. If we are, the president of the United States, whom the Constitution makes the commander-in-chief of our military forces, is empowered to conduct the war — meaning he has unreviewable authority to employ all of the essential incidents of war fighting.
Not some of them. All of them. Including eavesdropping on potential enemy communications. That eavesdropping — whether you wish to refer to it by the loaded “spying” or go more high-tech with “electronic surveillance” or “signals intelligence” — is as much an incident of warfare as choosing which targets to bomb, which hills to capture, and which enemies to detain…
Al Qaeda is an international terrorist network. We cannot defeat it by conquering territory. It has none. We cannot round up its citizens. Its allegiance is to an ideology that makes nationality irrelevant. To defeat it and defend ourselves, we can only acquire intelligence — intercept its communications and thwart its plans. Nothing else will do.
Al Qaeda seeks above all else to strike the United States — yet again — domestically. Nothing — nothing — could be worse for our nation and for the civil liberties of all Americans than the terrorists’ success in that regard. For those obvious reasons, no communications are more important to capture than those which cross our borders. Al Qaeda cannot accomplish its ne plus ultra, massive attacks against our domestic population centers, unless it communicates with people here. If someone from al Qaeda is using a phone to order a pizza, we want to know that — probable cause or not.
It is precisely that reason why the civil rights absolutists are not winning this argument. We’re at war with any enemy that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, blends in with our own civilian population, and has the stated goal of attacking us with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The Democrats keep trying to systematically play down the threat of terrorism – a threat that is very much real and very much prescient. The 9/11 Commission Report makes it clear that the FISA system was not adequate before September 11, 2001, and remains too slow and too cumbersome to deal with the technologies of the 21st Century. The most critical element in the fight against al-Qaeda is actionable intelligence, and the only way to gather that intelligence is to have a system that can follow the trail even when an al-Qaeda agent is using disposable pre-paid cellphones and calling from within the borders of the US.
The arguments about the “imperial Presidency” and the “expansion of executive power” are equally based on a willful misunderstanding of the situation. The Executive is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces – he (or she) has the Constitutionally-mandated authority to lead our armed forces in acts of war. Congress gave the President statutory authority to pursue al-Qaeda, and that includes the gathering of intelligence.
In fact, if Congress truly felt that this program was a horrendous threat to our civil liberties, they could take action. As McCarthy explains:
A blank check for the president? That is preposterous rhetoric. The commander-in-chief power includes the incidents of warfare. Nothing else. The president cannot seize the steel mills. He cannot suspend habeas corpus. He cannot close the banks, raise taxes, or conscript minors. He is no king. Indeed, if we are to talk about “the king” — as in having no clothes — our eyes should be cast on Capitol Hill.
From the hysteria that abounds, one would think that if FISA was not merely ignored but repealed, we would be living in a dictatorship, with All the President’s Men snooping into every phone call, every library, and every bedroom. It is nonsense. Congress retains the power of the purse. Nothing prevents it, tomorrow, from passing a law that denies all funding for any domestic surveillance undertaken by the NSA or any other executive branch agency.
The president could do nothing but veto such a bill. But if, as leading Democrats and civil-liberties extremists maintain, the NSA program is truly one of the most outrageous, execrable, impeachable acts ever committed in recorded history, that veto would easily be overridden.
So why doesn’t Congress just do it. Why doesn’t it, literally, put its money where many of its mouths are? Why don’t the people’s representatives bring to heel this renegade, above-the-law president and his blank check? Because they’d lose, decisively and embarrassingly, that’s why.
Because they’d have to take an accountable position on life-and-death. Because such a vote, in the middle of a war in which millions of American lives are at stake, would say, unambiguously, that they actually believe the government should not monitor enemy communications unless a federal judge — someone no one voted for and voters cannot remove — decides in his infinite wisdom that there is probable cause. It’s so much easier to carp for a scandal-happy media about “the privacy rights of ordinary Americans,” as if that were really the issue.
McCarthy is right – if Congress really wanted to end this program, they have the power of the purse. They can cut off all funding for this program just as they had done previously with the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. Despite all the heated rhetoric, so far there has been no Congressional push to cut the funding for this program. McCarthy is right, the Democrats were nailed for their intransigence in 2002 on the Homeland Security bill, and the last thing any Democratic politician wants to do is explain to their constituency why they believe that we should have sat around waiting for FISA to issue a warrant if we’d learned about September 11 a week prior to the event. Treating Osama bin Laden better than we treat Tony Soprano simply doesn’t make sense when one honestly examines the reality of the threat we face.
It’s so much easier to play the role of the aggrieved defenders of “civil rights” than it is to actually take action. It’s so much easier to invent obviously outlandish hypotheticals than it is to have an honest debate about the issues involved. It’s so much easier to mouth tired platitudes and mangled quotations about “liberty” and “security” than to consider that if there’s an attack on an American city with WMDs our civil rights will start a far more precipitous decline – not to mention the thousands or even millions of people who would lose their lives.
The essential problem here is the essential problem of our age – everything has become hyper-politicized as the single-minded fixation with George W. Bush poisons all political debate. This is less about the competing interests of security versus privacy and the power of the Executive in wartime than it is about being another partisan rallying cry for the left to wave around and get more ACLU donors to pony up more cash.
At the end of the day, we remain at war with an enemy who combines ruthlessness and technology to form a greater threat than this country has ever faced. Nazi Germany couldn’t destroy an American city. The Soviet Union was, for the most part, a rational actor constrained by the doctrines of Mutually Assured Destruction. Al-Qaeda has already demonstrated it has the capability of attacking the United States itself and is hardly a rational actor – they see the west as jahiliyyah and as long as we do not submit to their view of Islamic law, we are to be destroyed. We are not dealing with conventional threats, and the idea that if we’d found out that a group of people on expired student visas were plotting something on September 7, that we’d have to end surveillance on September 10 while FISA processes the paperwork is not a tenable position in dealing with this threat.
For those whose partisanship makes them see George W. Bush as a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, that is of little concern. But for Serious America, the right to “privacy” in regards to international communications reasonably suspected to involve terrorism does not in any way outrank the right for people to be free of terrorist attack.
First, there is the Constitution. It requires due process when the executive seeks to invade citizens’ privacy — home, person, papers and effects. There’s no equivocation about wartime. Rights are inherent to citizens, not granted by the Constitution, Congress, the judiciary or the executive.
The Constitution clearly, in black and white, spells out what is required when the executive for some reason believes some circumstance should take precedence. He can’t negate citizens’ rights on his say so alone. He must show cause and obtain a warrant from the judiciary. Great system. It’s worked well for a very long time now. It’s a key part of what sets this country apart from, say, the People’s Republic of China.
Bush could’ve sought accommodation from Congress. He didn’t feel he should have to and doubted Congress would go along, reportedly. The alternative was to use the FISA court, which has been nothing if not copacetic to requests, turning down a bare handful in years. Plus, there’s that three-day grace period for when time is tight.
Sorry, but your cavalier dismissal of the FISA court doesn’t square with the facts.
At the heart of the right-left divide over all this lies some semantical contortions and rhetorical sleight of mouth.
To begin with, the war against international terrorism is in fact a somewhat coordinated, protracted law enforcement effort, as it must be. Military operations may take place at times, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
Bush never sought a declaration of war from Congress, which is telling. What we have going on in Iraq is what a half century ago was rightly termed a police action.
Bush’s elective blunder invasion there has devolved, thanks to ignorance going in and mismanagement of historical magnitude since, into a guerrilla war against occupation.
Whether due to ignorance or for self-serving political reasons, Bush insists it’s all one and the same thing — worldwide war against terror, fighting the insurgents in Iraq. That simply doesn’t make it so.
And it doesn’t justify Bush doing whatever he’s of a mind to do, using the all-purpose, open-ended, perfectly elastic justification that hey, we’re at war and he’s commander in chief. Down that road lies fascist dictatorship.
In a remarkable departure from what has become SOP in our GOP-controlled Congress, the Senate will consider the legality of what Bush has been up to in its own good time. That’s thanks largely to Sen. Arlen Specter, who’s showing loyalty to the Constitution, his institution and his conscience over his president and party. God bless him.
With all due respect, that’s melodramatic nonsense. A busted clock is right twice a day. A band of fanatics willing to execute a suicide sneak attack against civilian targets in a country that prides itself on freedom and openness, does not an epic, all-time-great threat make.
Yes, al Qaeda is evil, devious and dangerous. But comparing it to the USSR and/or China is like comparing a carful of crack-damaged gang bangers to a good SWAT team.
I will definitely grant you the last part, but the former isn’t quite true.
Again, that’s not what the Fourth Amendment says. Here’s the actual text:
In order to violate the Fourth, a search must be “unreasonable” and not sustained by “probable cause” – which is almost certainly not the case here. Furthermore, the Courts have consistently ruled that the Executives plenary power to conduct wars allows him the ability to use wiretaps to gather intelligence.
It’s certainly possible that there could be a violation of FISA, but I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that there’s a Fourth Amendment violation involved.
Again, it takes much longer than three days to get a FISA warrant approved. The 9/11 Commission report singled out FISA as a weak link in the chain, and the 72-hour period doesn’t work if you have to stop the surveillance by hour 73. The FISA system simply is not adequate to the task at hand, and the Administration followed precedent in determining that the President’s plenary powers as Commander in Chief combined with the Authorization for Military Force granted the NSA the ability to spy on al-Qaeda without the need for FISA – a position which the FISA Court itself took in the Truong decision of 2002.
Except terrorism is an act of war. It is more than just a “law enforcement” exercise, and throughout the 1990s the Clinton Administration treated terrorism like a law enforcement problem, which is why al-Qaeda was able to launch attack after attack over those 8 years, finally culminating in September 11. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are not like the Mafia or even the Cali Cartel. They’re an agency that has the expressed purpose of killing all those who do not submit to their view of Islam. Treating that threat like they were nothing more than a bunch of two-bit gangsters ignores the fact that two-bit gangsters tend not to hijack planes and use them as weapons.
Again, if you can’t get the basic facts right, what good is your argument? Bush did seek a formal authorization for military force for both Iraq and Afghanistan which were both authorized by Congress and contained statutory authorization under the War Powers Act. In fact, that’s one of the principle legal arguments for the NSA program that Attorney General Gonzales has repeatedly mentioned.
Which is the same mealy-mouthed bullshit that we’ve all heard a thousand times. Just this week 6 “insurgent” groups declared open conflict with al-Qaeda – al-Zarqawi himself has reportedly been forced to step aside as emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The BBC has reported that the Iraqi people are some of the most optimistic in the world, and the same old tropes about “occupation” ignore the fact that Iraq has a sovereign and elected government that wouldn’t exist without our help and that of our coalition partners. And unlike al-Qaeda, we have every intention of leaving Iraq.
Yes, it is. The name of al-Zarqawi’s group is al-Qaeda in Iraq. It doesn’t get much more blatant than that.
Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad by March of 2002 after escaping from Tora Bora, Afghanistan. While in Iraq he ordered the assassination of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan. He plotted at attack against the Jordanian Intelligence building in Amman with chemical weapons. Not only did he do all that, but he did it with the full knowledge of the Hussein regime. The argument that al-Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other pre-war is a lie, pure and simple.
No, it doesn’t. Again, read McCarthy’s article. The gathering of intelligence is a necessary and proper act during wartime, doubly so when fighting groups like al-Qaeda. The argument that doing that equates with “fascist dictatorship” is a particularly ridiculous form of meaningless rhetorical excess.
Again, if this program is such a cut-and-dried example of violating the Constitution, then why has Congress not cut the NSA’s funding? They could kill the program right here and right now.
Of course, then they’d have to actually defend their own silly arguments, which suggests that this is nothing more than pandering.
You would argue that a nuclear or biological attack isn’t a great threat? If New York City or Washington D.C. were vaporized tomorrow the worldwide repercussions wouldn’t be “epic”? Common sense says otherwise. Not only would tens or hundreds of thousands be killed, but the US economy would feel the ripple effects for years – just look at what September 11 did to the US economy.
Except if a bunch of crack-damaged gang bangers got ahold of nuclear weapons, we’d be in deep shit.
The fundamental mistake of treating al-Qaeda so blithely is precisely why the Democrats simply aren’t capable of leading this nation in this time of war.
“You would argue that a nuclear or biological attack isn’t a great threat? If New York City or Washington D.C. were vaporized tomorrow the worldwide repercussions wouldn’t be “epicâ€? Common sense says otherwise. Not only would tens or hundreds of thousands be killed, but the US economy would feel the ripple effects for years – just look at what September 11 did to the US economy.”
A nuclear weapon big enough to “vaporize” a city couldn’t be delivered by conventional terrorist means. So-called suitcase nukes are small dirty bombs- capable of knocking out a city block or two and causing another 9/11- but not capable of much more. Even a small nuclear weapon- like the bombs used in Hiroshima- is beyond the capacity for a terrorist to deliver, let alone a metropolis-busting thermonuclear device.
The way I see it, if seeing a few thousand of my fellow citizens killed by terrorists once a decade is the price for living in an open society, I’ll take it, just as I’ll take 30,000 automobile deaths a year as the price to be paid for having speed limits higher than 15 mph. Freedoms have their price. I don’t think people take the utilitarian calculus into consideration when reacting to emotionally-charged events, such as terrorism. You like civil liberties and open borders, living in a globalized world? This is the price. Suck it up. Why is it worth $100s of billions to fight a war on terror and Islamofascism, but it’s not worth $100s of billions to develop foolproof car safety devices that could cut traffic deaths to nothing? We have the technology to develop such a system now- all the sensors, wifi networking technologies, overrides, they all exist, we could eliminate traffic deaths by 2010 if we developed and mandated intelligent car modifications. But we don’t.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; terrorism is convenient. Osama bin Laden has a face. Traffic death does not. And the measures we’re taking to fight terrorism will, in the long term, be far more destructive than terrorism itself, given that this is the entire POINT of terrorism- to perform attention-getting acts that result in overreaction and overextension and cause the enemy to damage himself from within. We’re still playing straight into Osama’s hands…
I’m actually more worried about biological terrorism than nuclear terrorism. An outbreak of a highly infectious agent like the Aralsk smallpox strain (likely to have been a weaponized variety) could kill millions – and all it takes is a vial or a “suicide agent” with the disease to spread an epidemic worldwide.
September 11 shut down the entire nation’s air traffic for days. It caused economic ripple effects for months. The risks of terrorist attack aren’t like traffic deaths. Traffic deaths can’t bring the nation’s economy to a halt. They can’t kill millions of people in a matter of weeks.
That argument isn’t a winner logically, and it is definitely not a winner politically. A utilitarian calculus would say that the rate of traffic deaths is predictable, relatively stable, and often can be lowered without resorting to technological means as the majority of accidents are attributable to human error. Terrorism is largely unpredictable, can cause vast amounts of devastation in one instant, and can cause massive aftershocks worldwide. Look at what happened with the Dark Winter exercise – our national healthcare system was overwhelmed in that scenario – not only killing many of those infected, but also those who had other medical problems but couldn’t get treatment in the rush.
Not taking terrorism seriously is one of the biggest mistakes that can be made – especially when the risks of a group like al-Qaeda getting their hands on WMDs is so high.
Nicq seems to be okay with the idea of the gov’t regulating our driving habits but not in fighting terrorism ? So the role of government is what exactly ?
Oh yes, terrorism is an act of war. Remarkably, after 9-11, we were able to determine quite handily where the attackers came from: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Our response? Why, invade Afghanistan and Iraq, of course. Applying the same logic, after Pearl Harbor, FDR would’ve ordered the invasion of Korea, then a Japanese puppet state. And since Japan was an Axis power, he might’ve thrown in a declaration of war against Hungary.
OK, because of the Taliban and bin Laden’s having nested there, invading Afghanistan was called for. The Iraq invasion was an entirely different matter, one that has served to weaken and distract from efforts elsewhere.
Certainly, with 20/20 hindsight it’s clear the Clinton administration failed to adequately counter and try to guard against the al Qaeda threat — a laxity the Bush administration more than perpetuated prior to 9-11.
Treating the al Qaeda threat as the law enforcement challenge it is does not have to equate with taking the threat lightly and responding inadequately. That assumption seems to be politically self-serving right-wing Republican orthodoxy, but it’s neither logical nor true. Opting for a law-enforcement approach makes sense because of the nature of al Qaeda. It’s simply recognition that we’re not going after the military forces of another nation and then choosing the best tools for the job.
Actually, going forward, we may need to adapt training and organization of our military to be able to better handle a more law-enforcement-like role outside the U.S.
Sorry, but your legalistic arguments endorsing Bush’s “‘Cause I say so” doctrine aren’t cutting any ice. The plenary powers for war, from which Attorney General Alberto “Rubber Stamp” Gonzales finds an inexhaustable supply of righteous justifications for the boss, are likely to be gagging points for even some Republican members of Congress, once some oversight finally gets under way. Well they should be.
Since you’re so enamored of them, you might want to consider this.
Along comes some future president. This president, a Democrat, say, is an amalgam of Lyndon Johnson at his most liberal, Ronald Reagan at his most charismatic, Bill Clinton at his slick and shabby worst, and Richard Nixon at his most devious, paranoid and abusive of power.
This president from hell wants to ensure he’ll get a second term, maybe even ram through a constitutional amendment allowing a third term. No matter what. So, being unscrupulous, he decides to gin up a wag-the-dog war, the better to whip up patriotism and people’s traditional desire to get in line behind the president in wartime. To top it off, he decides to bring as much of the federal government’s power as possible to bear on those who’ve gotten in his way politically and can be expected to be more of a headache in the future.
Do you really want this president to be able to justify spying on citizens’ communications, meetings, etc., and maybe doing more and worse, citing his plenary powers for war as justification?
I sure as hell don’t.
We had 8 years of terrorism as a police problem and it lead to 9-11, insanity is doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different result. 4 years of no attack means that we have probably attacked the right countries and are engaging the rest of the countires that use terror as a tactic. Assad is having a slight problem, Iran has been exposed and condemned by the world community. Pakistan is helpful, reluctantly so. That leaves Saudi Arabia and that may need to be dealt with too, but remeber Mecca and Medina are within Saudi Arabia so you may want to NOT invade there. Since terrorism is a tactic and not an end unto itself, how is it that you seem to want to address the tactic and not the broader stratigic goals of the terror organizations. Terrorism cannot exsist without state sponsership so for you to just address the terrorists would mean you let the state sponsers go and terrorism will continue. If you address the act of war (which is really what terrorism is) with a police response thats like taking a knife to a gun fight.
So you want an unelected, unaccountable judges to govern intelligence gather and the conduct of the war ? You want FISA courts to decide what a President can and cannot do to gather the intellegence on the foreign KNOWN terrorist calling his contact or buddy here in the US. You would rather that we not listen in to KNOWN agents of Al-Quieda call their people or people they know here in the US. Gee that sounds reasonable, God I hope you guys make this a issue for ’06.
Hidden in plain sight, the following (emphasis added) apparently escaped Ray M.’s eagle eye:
Looking at the Iraq fiasco realistically, it’s pretty obvious that using the wrong tools for the job, ineptly at that, and expecting a successful result is wasteful and foolhardy.
Those on the political right obviously believe they must mischaracterize the thinking and statements of the opposition in support their own dangerous, wasteful and failed approach.
I don’t think any reasonable person could derive from what I’ve written that I advocate treating al Qaeda blithely.
Indeed, in Iraq I wouldn’t oppose holding the next of kin of insurgent suicide bombers legally accountable, which borders on ruthlessness. The idea being that while those deluded fanatics might not care that much about their own lives, they might think twice if they knew they were condemning people they care deeply about to severe consequences.
Nor is it blithe to suggest that perhaps dealing realistically with the home of Wahabism, a principle — maybe the principle source of al Qaeda funding, and the homeland of 15 of the 9-11 highjackers makes good sense.
Ray: I was using this as an example, I do not advocate the example (in fact, I was trying to show how ridiculous the war on terror is). In fact, I think that interstate highway speed limits need to be boosted about 20 mph… 😉
Jay does make a good point about bioterrorism, though I’m still not sure that the money wouldn’t be better spent working on medical technologies that would make us immune to such attacks to being with… not to mention a whole host of other ailments…
3 weeks of a blitz that would have made Rommel look like a novice, and then building a country from scratch and somehow its a failed endevor. How long did they take to rout the taliban in Afganistan 4 weeks, hmm failure there too. Lets look at the other conflicts for some historical context, shall we. How long did it take to build back up Germany or maybe Japan after ww2, maybe a lot longer, how long did we have to remain in those countries, oh you mean we’re still there. Hey how about more recent history, we have Kosovo that was over and done in very short order, oh wait we’re still there too.
“Looking at the Iraq fiasco realistically, it’s pretty obvious that using the wrong tools for the job, ineptly at that, and expecting a successful result is wasteful and foolhardy.”
“Those on the political right obviously believe they must mischaracterize the thinking and statements of the opposition in support their own dangerous, wasteful and failed approach.”
Under whose criteria, they seem to be doing pretty well in both Afganistan and Iraq. You seem to forget that in this country our democracey wasn’t as far along as the Iraqi’s are currently. Afganistan didn’t have a stable government previously or had some ongoing war for a few decades and now, representative government, constitution, women being educated, women holding office… You seem to forget the growing pains in this countries history.. Hey how about France they really had a quick conversion from Monarcey to republic, if you didn’t mind losing your head. So by who’s critera are you governing this a failure, I know you wish it to fail but like I tell my kids just because you wish it to be so doesn’t make it so. The attention deficit disorder democrat, longing for the day when they don’t have to compete on National Security.
I’m not as cavalier about those “tools” you seem to want to defer to. Which tools, State Department (what will they draft a nasty letter or proclaim them a nation that needs a time out) How about the CIA. Hey they seen that 9-11 coming and that Iran nucleur program and how about N.Korea, maybe we can have Carter go back so they can have more time to get a next generation nuke. The Deutsch commision seemed to put an end to the effectiveness in the CIA and now the only operation they seem to be running is to get the current US administration removed. Even when they do something, like last weeks bombing, you and the rest of the libs will a cow. Maybe they could “leak” some more and have a NYTimes report in on all those “secret” meetings they’re having. What other tools are there ?FBI, wasn’t that what Clinton was using during his term, but they really couldn’t talk to other agencies and the seemed to have a fatal case of the political correctness. Let me know what other tools there are in our arsenal ?
In Afghanistan, the Taliban is reasserting itself with increasing numbers of more-deadly attacks. Poppys for heroin production is still the major cash crop.
In Iraq, attacks by insurgents tripled between 2003 and the end of 2004, and increased more last year. Those attacks have been increasingly deadly, too. The people have never been with us and are not with us now. Had they ever been with us, the insurgency would be all but decimated by now. Instead, it has grown and strengthened.
To make matter worse, non-insurgency Iraqis are dividing along ethnic and religious lines. Two correspondent reports in recent days have referred to civil war as an inevitability. Another said civil war is under way; it’s just not being acknowledged as such by coalition authorities.
We’ve learned this week that another $25 billion is unaccounted for or written off. Iraq’s oil industry is operating at about 25 percent of capacity and may collapse completely at any time. It has never been secured. Cities that were the focus of insurgency-clearing attacks are again rife with insurgents.
The more the improvised political process moves forward, the more clear it becomes the next government will be a pro-Iranian Shiite theocracy. That could easily turn out to be worse for our interests than Saddam was.
If you see this debacle as something that’s going well, no wonder you evidently think Bush is a terrific leader.
None are so blind as those who will not see.
As if saying that they do have problems means that all unraveling and going to hell in a handbasket. Sorry I don’t share the pessimism. Poppy growth in Afganistan, do you know what it was with the Taliban in charge. Its an ongoing problem and not one that has just popped up, as 90% or some God awful amount of Heroin comes from that area of the globe. But as an indicator it wouldn’t be a great arguement maker. 2 or 3 reporters saying we are in civil war or on the cusp of one, lets see.. is this a new arguement or has that arguement been used for the duration of the conflict. Somehow, even though they have been wrong for the entire war with their perdictions, they have it right this time. Their infrastructure isn’t up to snuff thats your critera, what was the country running so efficently under Saddam. electricity outside of Bagdad was only on for 2 hours a day most times less, they have overcome that problem and now with some outages and shortages they have gotten that up to having electricity 16-18 hours, though if its reported by the “pundits” its put as “Iraqi’s without power”. What is this premise that all was hunky dorry in pre-Saddam Iraq ? I thought the war was only for Oil, you mean we are bulding up the country and have not made oil production run at 110 % product, I need to talk to Dick Chaney maybe he has some strings in Haliburton.
Insurgent attacks have DECREASED, combined US/Iraqi forces are sweeping the boarder towns and are increasing pressure on those foreign fighters coming accross the boarders from Syria. Assad is having his handsful on both the Lebonaese front and his boarder with Iraq. I don’t think Assad wants this situation and would gladly take the pre-2003 condition back again. From the Chicago Tribune just 2 days ago:
“In a further sign of the rifts emerging within Iraq’s insurgency, Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has stepped aside as the head of a new council of radical groups in favor of an Iraqi, according to a posting on a Web site used by Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups” and further:
“Most notably, some Iraqi nationalist insurgent groups are turning against al-Zarqawi and his foreign Arab volunteers, whose spectacular suicide bombings have served the insurgency’s goals well but whose Islamic extremism has come to be seen as a liability by rebels whose aim increasingly is to secure a role for Sunni Iraqis in the new political order.”
Doesn’t seem to be that good for the insurgents and the Sunni’s are turning to politics as a better means to political change than insurgency.
Get your head off teh NYT and read some other sources, it may be (and this is just a thought)that the times may have an agenda.
Like the song says, “Don’t worry, be happy.”
Tell you what, Ray. You go to Iraq and spend a few days. If you make it from the airport into Baghdad in one not-abducted piece, try to enjoy yourself like a carefree American tourist visiting Rome, Rio or Hong Kong. Walk the boulevards, do a little shopping and dine out.
Just be sure to get your personal affairs in order before you go, especially your life insurance. And be sure the embassy and hotel people have the names and addresses of your next of kin.
So that said S.W., you have no rebuttal other than this tripe. Man the liberals these days are so shallow on information. Whether I visit Iraq or not, insurgent attacks have decreased and they are far more likely focused on soft targets and after the Iraqi’s themselves. Not the behavior of a confident or growing insurgence. Sorry to have disturbed your neat and tidy world of Bush hating..
My previous response was geared to what I considered patent nonsense in your preceding comment, Ray. It’s a lot like Republican budget fact bending. The number of attacks specifically against U.S. troops has declined a bit so, hey, let’s just round it off to saying the number of attacks has “DECREASED.”
Well, that’s not what USA Today reports.
I have a strong suspicion that if you were in the middle of all that, Ray, as a U.S. soldier, as an Iraqi security troop or as a civilian, you wouldn’t feel one bit SAFER.
But wait. I know, it must be that USA Today’s reporter just made all that up. Same thing for all the correspondents from all the liberal media.
Like I said, none are so blind as those who will not see.
So S.W. you’ve looked at the Brookings Report itself ? Here’s a link take a look http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf
That would show the # of Insurgents daily attacks has decreased since sept. or oct. of last year. In fact every category looks to be improving, so how do you think the USA Today reporter (good ol’ Rick Jervis) could interpret all that news as bad. Hmmm, ’cause he knows he has mindless drones out there who will not look at the link and take all the info verbatum ’cause it fits the Bush is bad we are failing meme…
“Like I said, none are so blind as those who will not see.”
Here’s so more from the NY Times (just this month), since you’ll trust the NY Times more than use Right wingers.
“It is impossible to say just how far the split extends within the insurgency, which remains a lethal force with a shared goal of driving the Americans out of Iraq. Indeed, the best the Americans can hope for may be a grudging passivity from the Iraqi insurgents when the Americans zero in on Al Qaeda’s forces.
But the split within the insurgency is coinciding with Sunni Arabs’ new desire to participate in Iraq’s political process, and a growing resentment of the militants. Iraqis are increasingly saying that they regard Al Qaeda as a foreign-led force, whose extreme religious goals and desires for sectarian war against Iraq’s Shiite majority override Iraqi tribal and nationalist traditions.
While American and Iraqi officials have talked of a split for months, detailed accounts of clashes were provided by men claiming to be local insurgents.
Abu Lil was one of four Iraqi men interviewed for this article who said they were fighters for the Islamic Army, one of the main insurgent groups. Despite its name, its members have nationalist and largely secular motivations. While their membership in the insurgency could not be independently verified, the descriptions the four men offered of themselves and their exploits were lengthy, detailed and credible.
The four men interviewed are, by all accounts, ordinary Iraqis. One worked as a trash collector. Another was a part-time mechanic in an ice factory. All of them said they had children. While they claimed to be members of the same group, different members provided lengthy accounts of operations in an array of cities in the Sunni Triangle. The men gave Iraqi nicknames and noms de guerre. Some of their assertions, including specific examples about clashes with Al Qaeda’s forces, were confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.
According to an American and an Iraqi intelligence official, as well as Iraqi insurgents, clashes between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Iraqi insurgent groups like the Islamic Army and Muhammad’s Army have broken out in Ramadi, Husayba, Yusifiya, Dhuluiya and Karmah.
In town after town, Iraqis and Americans say, local Iraqi insurgents and tribal groups have begun trying to expel Al Qaeda’s fighters, and, in some cases, kill them. It is unclear how deeply the split pervades Iraqi society. Iraqi leaders say that in some Iraqi cities, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and local insurgent groups continue to cooperate with one another