Bush: Al Qaeda attack on West Coast thwarted

The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.

As Bush continues to defend his illegal wiretapping of American citizens we should always keep the following questions in the conversation

How did breaking the law help this investigation? Why wasn't the current FISA regulation, that allows warrants to be granted after the fact , sufficient?

Until we get reasonable answers to the questions, we should not let the leader of our country get away with playing politics with our civil rights.

First, it's not illegal.

And second, we're at war. I for one am glad that we have the ability to intercept the conversations of Al Qaeda operatives talking with their fellow scumbags within the US. They're not listening to your phone call to your doctor or your financial consultant. If we ever find out that they were, then I'd be the first to call that illegal, but that's not what they're doing. They're listening to calls from the enemy of this country that would slit your throat if they had the chance. I'm glad the president has that option in a time of war.

@J Richmond: First, it's illegal.

The Constitution of the the United States of America prevents the government from listening to any communication unless they have reasonble cause (See 4th Amendment). If they have reasonable cause they go through FISA. Christ, if they have reasonable cause they can go through the Police/FBI, if producing evidence of reasonable cause will tip off the bad guys then go through FISA. If you don't have reasonable evidence you sidestep both FISA and Police/FBI. Congress has no authorization to allow the President to supercede the authority of the Constitution without a Constitutional Amendment. The only way that what the President is using the NSA for will become legal is if 3/4 of Congress agree that the NSA is so trustworthy (especially after all the fun facts we got in 1978) that it strikes the 4th Amendment from the Constitution. Until that's done everyone who says this is legal is a liar and deserves to be called out as one.

And second, I'm not sure why wiretapping even got brought up because not only was domestic spying not responsible for the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

But the White House would not say whether the 2002 plot was thwarted as a result of the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on the international emails and phone calls of people inside the United States with suspected ties to terrorists.

Instead the bad guy got caught before he could any damage because we were able to work with other governments and they got the bastard.

The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.

I would love to know the name of the country responsible for this capture so I can send them a thank you card. We need to publicly support our allies in this War on Terror and we should hold random demonstrations of support for their successes in an otherwise secret war.

billybobjoe wrote:

I'm not sure why wiretapping even got brought up because not only was domestic spying not responsible for the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The implication is analogous to 'terrorist organizations have been in Irag, terrorists attacked our country, we must stop the leader of Iraq.' Wire-tapping is in the news with no evidence to support that it has done any good, so the president reminds us that a foreign country caught some terrorist suspects over three years ago to make us all think that everything's working as planned.

I would love to know the name of the country responsible for this capture so I can send them a thank you card.

According to the BBC:

Planning began in October 2001, but it was derailed in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.
It was finally thwarted in the summer of 2003, when the suspected head of JI, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested in Thailand.

You could at least say thanks to Thailand, I suppose.

You ain't at war. if you were at war you wouldnt be going to work everyday, coming home, watching TV, and then going to sleep in preperation for another day of work. If you were at war, that @!$%# wouldnt be possible.

More importantly, if the country is at war, shouldn't there have been a declaration of war by Congress, as required by the constitution?

With that snipe out of the way, I would love to know more about this plot and the foiling thereof. It may well have been real, and excellent work by the intelligence and law enforcement personnel. Or it may be spin by the administration. Based on the rather content-poor story linked it's impossible to tell.

Thanks Thailand! Keep up the great police work!

I guess J Richmond doesn't believe in keeping Presidential powers in check. Then you might want to move to a country with a dictator. There are laws in place for the president follow. Which he hasn't. And I for one am not about to give up some of my freedoms just because I am scared. Which people like you are encouraging, with words like "slit your throat"

@ Pitcherthis

So in the year 2000, were you so vocal about all this :I for one am not about to give up some of my freedoms just because I am scared" when President Clinton was running Echelon? What is echelon? To quote 60 minutes "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand." Broadcast February 27, 2000

Link

Now remember this is just domestic surveillance / spying, not anything to do with anything outside the country. I would hope that you had the same outrage for President Clinton did it? If not then it is all for political reasons, and that is not a good way to protect our country.

Just my $.02

I assume there was some fairly bad news for Bush today, that they simply had to keep off the front pages somehow?

Cos this sounds like the same kinda Bush-@!$%# as the WMD's.

Heh. See what I did there.

@mlarsen

In my opinion Mr. Clinton did a horrible job of protecting our freedoms. The police and city reaction to the 1999 WTO Conference protesters was atrocious and the President needed to step in at the time and I've found little evidence that he did so. This isn't for "political reasons" although it really is, because protecting the constitution is what the American political system should be about. We need to look forward, not stay stagnant rehashing bad things that people did before to justify bad things people are doing now.

I believe the entire wiretapping scandal was just really poorly handled by the Bush administration. They have a majority in Congress and just about any modification they want to make to something such as FISA would probably be passed, especially if they make it sound as good as "we're wiretapping terrorists so that they won't kill your family". Instead, they invited the hostility of the general public by making it seem like a direct attack on personal freedoms. I agree with everyone who said they would not compromise freedom for so protection when there is no evidence of it at all. I too would like to know more about the story.

In addition, I've heard that wiretapping is about a billion times less effective than the tried and true informant method. In any case, I'm skeptical that emails and cell phone calls led to an arrest in Thailand.