Letters to the Editor

• Anonymous:

  [Read the article: Jihadis throw a wild bash over the Protect America Act]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Greenwald can make the specious claim that Republicans are fear-mongering the terror issue only because the specific strategies employed by the White House, including wiretapping, have had a large measure of success in identifying enemies and deterring them from using more normal channels of communications to plan their attacks.

  How do you know they have had success? This information is classified. If you know this, you shouldn't be telling us, and if you don't then you yourself are making a specious claim. All you have is the old "we haven't been attacked since 9/11" which is about as strong as my rock which keeps tigers away. Since I got the rock, no tigers have come near me.

  Greenwald's claims that the telecoms have "broken the law" is just one more way to slip past the difficult details of the FISA situation. The "law" in question and the "liability" in question regards civil law, and since the question of the President's authority to authorize wiretaps is a Constitutional one, it is simply ludicrous to assert that telecoms have "broken the law" simply because they are exposed to liability suits.

  This is aggregious. Greenwald spent months arguing the fine details of the constitution, and the FISA law that was in force in 2001 when Bush first ordered warrantless wiretapping. He has not "slipped past it" it is simply been long established with his audinence and he no longer needs to belabour these points. Go read his archives for why neither Article II nor the AUMFs are any form of reasonable basis for concluding the wiretapping is legal.

  Just because a question is "constitutional" doesn't mean one side isn't clearly and obviously in the wrong. Dick Cheney claims the vice-presidency is not part of the executive branch. This is beyond ludicrous. Are we to pretend this is a serious argument because the question is "constitutional" before deciding he's deluded or mendacious in making this absurd claim?

  What the Senate passed eliminated liability in very measured and limited terms. It requires the government to give written assurances that the programs in question are legal, for one. Greenwald's refusal to acknowledge that telecommunications companies should have some protection against suits regarding legal governmental wiretapping is an extremely tendentious way of dealing with the true crux of the issue. Rather than focus on the constitutional rights of the executive to protect the nation and whether or not they include wiretapping without judicial approval, Greenwald, and the Democratic leadership in the House would instead rather play legal mind games with the industries necessary for such measures to take place. By denying them protection from liability, Greenwald and the House Dems hope to create a situation where the telecoms are forced to resist what would otherwise be legal requests from the government.

  Well all of this would follow if warrantless wiretapping of US citizens was legal, which is clearly is not, so all of the above is wrong. In short, it is not legal just because the Executive branch declares it so. The US system of government grants the power to decide what legal is to the Judicial, not the Executive. There is no good faith claim for the executive to believe this is legal since it rests on explicitly violating a law passed by a supermajority of the legislative branch. If the exec thinks this law is unconstitutional, they should challenge it in court and let the Supreme Court rule. Instead, they have gone to great lengths to avoid ever allowing a court to rule on their activities using the states secrets privilege to an extent never seen even in the height of the cold war, back when the Soviet Union superpower had the world's most sophisticated spying agency working overtime to steal US secrets.

  Pretending the pre-existing FISA law, which many observers have acknowledged to have created the constitutional conflict between the judiciary (in this case the special FISA courts) and the executive, is satisfactory is simply another way of resisting executive assertions of constitutional authority, since even Clinton administration officials contended that FISA overreached judicial authority regarding wiretaps.

  Where did they do that? Link please. Even if they did, Clinton is not the end-all standard for what is and is not constitutional. He can be wrong too.

  Greenwald shows a lot of outrage, but managed to make very liitle sense in the process.

  You have made an effort to claim all of Greenwald's arguments are weak but you make none in defence of your claims. How does this work if the Executive has unlimited authority to wiretap anyone at solely its own discretion? That it can order US companies to cooperate with its spying activities. Where is the check on this behaviour? Impeachment? You can't impeach for things you don't know about and no, gang-of-8 briefings don't suffice in that regard, since the members would be criminally liable if they tell anyone what they hear in such briefings.

  We know for a fact your way leads to serious abuse since the Church committee and Watergate uncovered all manner of systemic abuse by the Executive branch into the privacy rights of US citizens and especially peace activists like John Lennon and MLK.

  Permalink Friday, February 15, 2008 12:49 PM