For long-term thinking, read Robert Wright's series.

The unfortunate thing about this is that we are still not discussing changing policies that doom us to conflict. It's all about tactics and an unending war.

A debate in Congress is a good idea. Let's put it all on the table.

The first question is whether it is reasonable during wartime for the Government to eavesdrop, without a warrant, on communications between hostile foreign powers and persons in the US who may or may not be acting in concert with the hostile foreign power. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that the Government does not know the identity of the US person, just that some telephone or computer in the US is receiving a call or email from or making a call or email to a known hostile foreign power. I have a hard time seeing that as unreasonable but what do you think?

What we need to do is remove ideaology from our policical ruling class. They have time and time again demonstrated their inability to consiter the real consequences of their policy decisions. For example, never admitting a mistake, "catastrophic success", refusal to consider criticism, false mandates, etc.

Instead, we need to make a decades-long plan to improve our democracy so that it represents the true consensus of the nation. No more spoiler voting, no more uncontested congressional races, no more gerrymandering.

The cure for an ailing democracy is more democracy, not a bum-rush of presidential power.

DBL --

Where's the oversight? Is "the government" just the executive branch?

And is this a policy we're going to empower through law, or is it just okay because it sounds like an effective method of catching a bad guy?

It's obvious, in a time of national emergency, liberals lost their ****. It takes a while for the grownups to reassert control in a rational way, but the Republicans can be counted on to sensibly guide this country despite the hysteria visited upon national discourse by the shrill liberals.

On 9/11, the liberals just screamed and screamed to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. They screamed about WMD. They screamed about sleeper cells in the US, and balsa wood drones of death, and contacts between Saddam and Osama.

Yes, thankfully the grown-ups -- Republicans -- have reasserted control.

The failure was to use the Pentagon and not State. It is Bush's failure. All the rest is just yelling. Imagine: better results at 1/50th the cost!

Jesus fucking christ tbrosz, you really are a stupid idiot.

Thank God. The Republicans have enabled a government of hysteria for far too long, jumping at imaginary threats and utterly failing to deal with the real threats.

I for one am sick and tired of the hysteria coming from the oval office--"Saddam Hussein's Mushroom Cloud!" "Torturing everyone we can get our hands on is the only way we'll ever ever ever be safe!"

Hopefully, with responsible and non-hysterical grownups finally getting some input into the process, we can stop panicking and start putting together some real programs that'll be effective against terrorists.

And then, who knows, maybe when we stop letting the hysterical women run the show and start listening to people with actual courage, intelligence, and resolve, then we'll actually catch Osama bin Laden!

The first question is whether it is reasonable during wartime for the Government to eavesdrop, without a warrant, on communications between hostile foreign powers and persons in the US who may or may not be acting in concert with the hostile foreign power. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that the Government does not know the identity of the US person, just that some telephone or computer in the US is receiving a call or email from or making a call or email to a known hostile foreign power. I have a hard time seeing that as unreasonable but what do you think?

Unless there is some substantial immediate cause which justifies not getting a warrant, I see no reason why it would be reasonable to allow such searches of US persons without a warrant, for whatever purpose; given the existence of a scheme where warrants can be secured after the fact, from a secret court, there is very little conceivable reason to evade the general warrant requirement.

The warrant requirement is a safeguard against sloppy, misdirected government work, it guards both the liberty of citizens targetted and the resources of government and the security of the citizens the government is nominally acting to protect with the search. While the secret court process is in many ways a less robust protection of all of these interests than an open court process, there are certainly cases where an open court process would defeat the purpose. However, there is simply no reasonable argument I can see for not securing warrants, after-the-fact if necessary, from the FISA court.

Congress has, however, already debated this issue and decided that, during time of war, there may be unforeseen exigencies which require such action, which is why under FISA the President may authorize 15-day electronic surveillance without a warrant and without the usual FISA restrictions on warrantless surveillance -- during a declared war. The present administration seeks to invoke power beyond that which has been deemed appropriate in declared war without seeking either an express and specific declaration of war or seeking an expansion of existing legal authority from Congress. This is inappropriate.

DBL --

Let us examine this hypothetical situation:

A foreign government uses high-powered decryptuion techniques to breach computer firewalls, then uses those computers to transmit messages to its agents inside the US.

The NSA, monitoring the computer transmissions, identifies your computer as one of several potential retransmitters. They extract everything from your computer.

Anything that might be a financial record is forwarded to the IRS to be compared against your tax returns.

Any porn or links to porn sites on your computer is checked. If any image is of an underage person, the information is forwarded to an appropriate authority so that you may be charged as a sex offender.

Shall I go on? The constitution states that you and your property will not be searched without a warrant. You may want to keep that protection, even if this case is only hypothetical.

OT: Right now, CNN is asking whether the NYC transit strikers are committing "Treason"! I kid you not.

...the dominating fear of another attack has kept the White House focused on not losing the next skirmish rather than promoting the nation's long-term interests.

I don't think the WH has a dominating fear of another attack. Say rather that they have a dominating desire to keep others in fear so to keep themselves in power. It is so transparent. They accuse the left of being soft on terror and so forth not because they really believe it, but because they can use this fear to scare continued support for themselves out of the now terrified sheep. It's all about remaining in office, in power.

The more that comes out, the better. But make no mistake; this is going to be a difficult battle. I don’t expect anything of import to really change things until the public pulls its head out of its ass, pays attention, actually gives a shit, and votes them out of office.

This NSA stunt will be categorized by historians alongside the Alien and Sedition Act.

I think the WH would love another attack. It would give GW the chance to stand on a pile of rubble and proclaim that the attack could have been prevented if not for treasonous Democrats. Then he could suggest that for the country to be secure forever it would be best if he remained president for life.

EHT: a good percentage of the public will never pull their heads out of Bushs ass. It's nice and warm and they feel safe in there.

Jesus fucking christ tbrosz, you really are a stupid idiot.
Posted by: anon for this one on December 21, 2005 at 1:41 PM | PERMALINK

Fooled, foiled, by the fake tbrosz again. I now find that I look at the email address before deciding whether or not to read the post.

If I want a good laugh, I'll read the fake tbrosz.

If I want a better laugh, I'll read the real one.

Teasing out the differences between traditional military war and the War on Terror is really essential for a debate about the steps the government should take to stop al Qaeda and other terrorist attacks, and you've done an admirable job of it.

In the long run, after being forced to limit our military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and getting past the untenable notion of bringing liberal democratic change to the Middle East by the bayonet, the strategies used in our "war" against al Qaeda and its offshoots will probably have a much greater resemblance to law enforcement than military deployment. It's ironic, really, since all the rhetoric after 9/11 was that "everything changed" so much that traditional intelligence and law enforcement methods were laughably inadequate to stop al Qaeda, even though they are really the only way to stop transnational organizations without solid operational ties to governments.

It's my hunch that Americans will be just fine with this if it's framed against the prospect of having an unchecked executive, rather than against the image of flames and smoke billowing out of the Twin Towers. The revelations in the NYT article have alerted the public to the dangers of allowing the president to declare an indefinite state of war.

I think it will come down to the court system to determine that, while it may be useful rhetorical shorthand, the "War on Terror" is not a set of policies and actions that warrant the expansion of presidential prerogatives above the oversight of the other two branches of government.

Jesus fucking christ tbrosz, you really are a stupid idiot.

you got that right.

You can smell the Bushhit on his breath.

The constitution states that you and your property will not be searched without a warrant.

It says it won't be searched unreasonably, and tha warrants won't be issued without probable cause. Recognizing that, without such a reading, the probable cause requirements for warrants would be meaningless, the courts have held that, to be reasonable, in all but a narrow range of exceptional cases, a search must have a warrant, but the warrant requirement is not without exception.

The reasonableness requirement is, however, without exception.

And those laws and policies need to be debated openly

Shorter Drum: We Democrats believe that the US should give the terrorists a complete roadmap as to what we might do to find them. Nothing should ever be kept secret from the terrorists.

It's JERRY-rigged, not jury-rigged.

If "conservatives" are so fucking scared of dying, then the answer is simple - they can create a country where every citizen must register every movement - by car, by foot, by train, by plane - with the government. Every financial transaction must be registered, as must every possession. Also, every conversation must be monitored, and every internet access. In fact, the internet is too dangerous - in Conservoworld, they'll ban it.

Then, in that country, there will be no crime.

Of course, that country will not be the United States as it was conceived. But hey, at least they'll be safe. And out of here.

I think the WH would love another attack. It would give GW the chance to stand on a pile of rubble and proclaim that the attack could have been prevented if not for treasonous Democrats. Then he could suggest that for the country to be secure forever it would be best if he remained president for life.

On September 1, 1939, a group of Wehrmacht officers, dressed in Czech Army uniforms, attacked a weather station on the German-Czech border. Upon receiving word, Hitler announced an unprovoked attack from the Czechs, declared war, and invaded.

Don't put this kind of stuff beyond Bush.

craigie, I suggest we give them Kansas

POed Liberal:

IF they did do it, and it ever came out, I guarantee all the right-wing trolls here would point to Operation Northwinds and say "look, a Democratic administration considered doing something similar. Hypocrites!"

Jesus fucking christ tbrosz, you really are a stupid idiot.

As opposed to the idiots who keep falling for the clearly-labeled fake over, and over, and over...

DBL- another example, less hypothetical. As a child in the 80s', I had a pen pal in the USSR. I met him at camp in the US, so obviously his father was connected, no one else went to summer camp outside the Soviet Union (he was an attache at the Consulate in DC, I know now) so there is a pretty good chance he was connected somehow to the National Security apparatus in the USSR. Therefore, the letters we sent back and forth should be opened, (now our emails, IMs and text messages?) is my computer open to the NSA because I communicate with someone like that?

cmdicely: Google "Reuben James" incident under FDR.

And you should have your own blog, you're the most frequent commenter here... And why haven't you run afoul of the frequent-posting auto-ban here?

Sorry Tbrosz, but the fake tbrosz is really really good. BTW, do you think you will get an acetylene cutting torch for Christmas?

As far as I can tell, Kevin's recent posts on this and related topics, and the sort of thinking by other writers that he appears to agree with, ignore the crucial point. These policies by the Bush administration are not the actions of a "panicky president" and they are not "poorly thought out" policies driven by the " dominating fear of another attack".

Rather, they are a deliberate effort to exploit the public's fear of terrorism in order to put in place an authoritarian government under the rule of -- for all practical purposes -- a king, which is exactly what George W. Bush will be if Dick Cheney succeeds in establishing the unchecked, unchallengeable "executive powers" that he has spoken of in the last couple of days.

Kevin, you need to stop pretending that Cheney and Bush mean well but are misguided. They don't mean well. They are would-be dictators who want to destroy Constitutional government in this country. If they thought they could get away with simply declaring permanent martial law and suspending the Constitution for the duration of the never-ending "war on terror" they would do it. They must be stopped.

It is beginning to dawn on the American public that Bush and the Republicans have no clue how to fight terrorism.

Example: Rumsfield says he thinks - but does not know - that bin Laden no longer manages al Qaeda.

Well, why doesn't he know?

What's the point of all the NSA spying if they can't even figure that out?

It's JERRY-rigged, not jury-rigged.

No, "jury-rigged" is quite fine and, if anything, superior; while "jerry-rigged" is not uncommonly used, that is actually a derived from "jury-rigged" by false assumption from similarity of common pronunciation that "jury-rigged" is a relative of "jerry-built" which has a completely separate etymology:

ju·ry-rig
tr.v. ju·ry-·rigged, ju·ry-·rig·ging, ju·ry-·rigs
To rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise: The survivors of the wreck jury-rigged some fishing gear.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[From jury-rig, jury-rigging, improvised rigging on a ship, modeled on jury-mast, temporary mast, perhaps ultimately from Old French ajurie, help, from aider, to help. See aid.]

From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, via dictionary.reference.com. See also definitions of "jerry-rigged" and "jerry-build" in the same source.

cmdicely,

As always, your analysis is thoughtful and raises important questions.

You might want to read what President Clinton's Associate Attorney General, John Schmidt, has to say about the NSA program in today's Chicago Tribune. He says that the eavesdropping on international communications with al Qaeda members was within the President's constitutional powers and that the FISA could not encroach on those powers. That is especially true, it seems to me, during wartime.

The problem with the warrant requirement, whether it's obtained before or after the search, is that it must be based on "probable cause" to believe a crime has been committed, and the determination of "probable cause" must not be viewed in hindsight but based on the facts known prior to the search. That will not often be the case where the Government seeks to eavesdrop on communications between hostile foreign powers and perhaps unknown persons in the US. It's entirely possible that no crime has been committed, or that even if a criminal conspiracy has been formed, its existence is unknown to the Government, but the intelligence sought may still be vital to interrupting hostile action against the U.S.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that there is great potential for abuse. I don't want any president, whether Democratic or Republican, eavesdropping on his domestic political enemies. It seems to me that it should be possible to come up with some kind of oversight, some regular reporting to Congressional Intelligence Committees, that could alleviate that concern. (The problem of Congressional leaks of intelligence matters to the press (ahem, Sen. Rockefeller) we'll have to leave for another day.)

Another take on all this from a Clinton associate Attorney General here.

But ... but... Clinton!!!!

Kevin Drum,

ABOUT THE WARTIME PRESIDENT; THE U.S. HAS NOT 'DECLARED WAR' ON ANYONE SINCE 12/7/41. THERE WAS NO FORMAL DECLARATION OF WAR ON IRAQ. WE WERE 'LIBERATORS' LOOKING FOR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND THE REST YOU KNOW. BY STRICT DEFINITION DO YOU BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE A 'WARTIME PRESIDENT'? JUST A THOUGHT.
REGARDS, ANNA

Yes, when the going gets tough, the tough invoke Clinton.

BTW, wasn't Clinton the president who put, you know, Republicans in his cabinet? The one who seemed to genuinely want to improve the country as a whole, as opposed to the fortunes of 6 or 8 powerful right wing cranks?

Why yes, he was. How about that...

Kevin writes, We should learn from the mistakes of the past, not repeat them.

Let's start by ensuring the McGovernite policies aren't implemented. The disaster of the mid 1970s foisted on us by liberal Dems (some of whom are still in the Senate) harmed our intelligence community significantly.

Anna, the US has declared war far fewer times than we've been at war. The Congress has the authority, via legislation, to give the President war-making powers, and the President (according to many constitutional scholars) has a number of war-making powers himself -- the exact boundaries are hotly debated.

So if you're hanging your hat on a declaration of war, you might want to look for another peg. Just a thought.

DBL writes, I agree wholeheartedly with you that there is great potential for abuse. I don't want any president, whether Democratic or Republican, eavesdropping on his domestic political enemies. It seems to me that it should be possible to come up with some kind of oversight, some regular reporting to Congressional Intelligence Committees, that could alleviate that concern.

Yes, and we have that already for a number of programs. It would be helpful if the ranking Democrats on the intel committees would speak up (without disclosing classified material) and tell us whether or not they've been kept in the loop.

None of us wants civil liberties abused. But we do have to figure out what are enemies are doing, and some of our enemies are snooping about inside our country. al-Qaeda has cells here; we'd be foolish to ignore their communications.

fake tbrosz: If you have an actual sentient comment on the article, please feel free to post it. You know damn well that if that opinion had gone the opposite way, Kevin would have had it quoted in a post in half an hour.

By the way, what exactly are *****?

other tbrosz: If you have an actual sentient comment on the article, please feel free to post it. You know damn well that if that selling of your Acetylene-torch-Brooklyn-Brodge plot had gone the opposite way, Kevin would have had it quoted in a post in half an hour.

By the way, what exactly was *****?

POed Liberal writes, On September 1, 1939, a group of Wehrmacht officers, dressed in Czech Army uniforms, attacked a weather station on the German-Czech border. Upon receiving word, Hitler announced an unprovoked attack from the Czechs, declared war, and invaded.

Don't put this kind of stuff beyond Bush.

Good grief, this is why so many on the right look at PA, Kos, DU and Atrios as a fever swamp.

GWB is a far more honorable person than you, frankly. At 12 noon EST, Jan. 20, 2009, he's going to leave office. We'll have another President (a Republican, I suspect), and that president will do what is right, proper and necessary to keep us safe.

But neither GWB nor the next President will stage an event so as to declare a war or to seize power.

Frankly, it's writing like yours that causes many sensible Americans to disregard whatever good writing might come out of the progressive Left. Kos finally figured that out and started banning goofy comments a while back (thought not enough). I realize Kevin provides a wide-open forum.

But really, your comment is embarrassing.

Just what party is in fear,Why the party that has the most members that ducked out of there war duties.

So if you're hanging your hat on a declaration of war, you might want to look for another peg.

But if he's responding to an "argument" that the Constitution or some portion of it can be set aside here because someone waves the word "war" around, or because war powers have been granted in some far corner of the globe, I think it's fair to point out the limitations of metaphors and bills.
.

This is cute Tbroz fighting with Tbroz.Them righties they will pick a fight with anybody.

Another take on all this from a Clinton associate Attorney General here. - Posted by: tbrosz on December 21, 2005 at 2:02 PM

Once again, the conservatard talking-points are smothered in their crib.

Next? Oh, still waiting for a reload? That's OK, I'll check back later.
.

Steve White:

Do you consider Islamist terrorism an existential threat to the USA?

And if so, as a doctor and thus a scientist -- can you explain why?

Curiously,

Bob

GWB is a far more honorable person than you, frankly.

There is zero evidence for this assertion.

Oh, and JFK was presented with a plan for blowing up ships and killing Ameican civilians in Florida, so that he could blame Castro and invade Cuba. The military was all for it. He refused.

I see nothing to suggest that this administration would respond the same way.

Oh, and I'll believe this:

At 12 noon EST, Jan. 20, 2009, he's going to leave office.

when I see it. And not before.

GWB is a far more honorable person than you, frankly.

roflmao. Usually you're a pain to read, but that was genuinely funny.

President Bush has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, after invading Iraq over a threat existed in his own mind. If he had any honor he would accept responsibility, resign and retire to Crawford.

If I was President and made that big of a mistake, I'd have the Secret Service find me a bullet that would fit Saddam's pistol, and then ask them to give me a few minutes alone.

May God have mercy on Bush's soul, and those of his apologists.

You know how we win this war against the Bush regime, guys?

We defeat the idea that a tiny handful of boxcutter-weilding fanatics did anything other than get profoudly lucky.

Terrorism is a threat, sure. Just ask the white supremecists in Idaho who still worship the memory of Timmy McVeigh.

But it shouldn't be this country's number one preoccupation, either.

By doing that, all we've done is aggrandize an exceedingly small handful of ideologues despised in their own countries of origin.

Bob

Sensible amuricans? Suuure. White Steve is a sensible amurican. He love the Dear Leader, and will clap very loudly when needed.

What a cracker you are. What a timid, pencil neck geek who lives in fear. The Dear Leader appreciates your cheerleading skills.

Good boy, SteveWHite, good boy. Now sit! Heel, little puppy, heel!

Gods, what another typical baby boomer bore you are, White Steve. Did you ever get laid in high school?

Mr. Bungle:

Mr. B is a great band. Have you ever heard The Cardiacs -- one of their big influences according to Trey "Scummy" Spruance?

I think it's where they got their approach to polyrhythms from.

Bob

How anyone can ascribe the word 'honorable' to GW Bush is beyond me. As a business man, nope, as governor, nope, and certainly not as president.

I think that in 100 or 200 years historians will look back on this era and find that the best way to describe U.S. foreign policy will be "aimless."

Since the end of WWII, we've gone from one contrived conflict to another. All of the conflicts were contrived, because at no time did any of our "enemies," including the U.S.S.R., have some logical upside to war with us.

There were a couple of ways to handle this. We chose, not to ignore illogical threats, but to treat ANY threat, logical or illogical, as valid.

This is how you got the defense budget we now have. Its also how we end up, in 2005, in Iraq.

I have to grit my teeth everytime Bush talks about "not letting the terrorists win."

Not "letting" them win? They "won" the minute the first plane hit the first tower. Even if it was confusing on that terrible day, by now, only some few years later, its patently obvious -- OBL did not have an invasion force stationed in the North Atlantic, or off Hawaii, he did not even have one stationed off Saudi Arabia! There has been no effort on OBL's part, or on the part of any Muslim fundamentalist, to convert some significant part of the population to Islam.

Nope, he's just a religious fundamentalist nutjob in a cave. Wanted to kill some people, and did.

And, we haven't spent the last four years sealing up every cave, we haven't spent the time eliminating religious nutjobs (not even in this country). And we certainly haven't spent the last four years improving the general view of the United States in the rest of the world, which would have been the best of all.

Why we insist on continuing to fight WWII is a bit of a mystery to me, and I am sure history will bear out this view.

Steve White: "But neither GWB nor the next President will stage an event so as to declare a war or to seize power."

Of course not. And neither Bush nor the next hypothetical Republican president would manufacture or exaggerate the capabilities and/or intentions of another country in order to declare war or increase their power.

This is cute Tbroz fighting with Tbroz

Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

Sorry, real tbroz. You have been sounding rather sane these days. Sorta. Kinda.

hank:

Well-said. Exactly.

We refought WW2 in Vietnam. That's why the press and the politicians lost it for us, so the Swift Boat revisionists tell us.

And that's precisely why we're at "war" with a tactic and not a nation.

Bob

Nope, he's just a religious fundamentalist nutjob in a cave. Wanted to kill some people, and did.

While I, like most non-color-blind Americans, found the Laura Bush primary color makeover of the Oval Office to be garish at best, I still wouldn't call it a "cave."
.

I think this should be the talking points of Democract, how to effectively handle and fight terrorism? What are the measures of progress? What is war on terror? How do you measure success or failure on the war on terror?

This is a start to a more achievable and sustainable solution, as opposed to King Bush and his minions preferred solution of
ransacking/pilfering the country's coffer, limiting or removing civil liberties/rights, ignoring international laws, insulting/rebuking/extorting friendly countries, terrorizing its citizen, dampening/dissing dissenting opinions, imposing a preferred religion point of view into its citizen and initiating a needless and endless war. All these in the name of War on Terror.

If that is what War on Terror means to King Bush, then I'd rather emigrate out of this country.

rmk, haven't heard that one. I've heard all the other offshoot bands, most notable Secret Chiefs.

Time to take our country back.

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Republicans create a fascist government here in order to fight other fascist governments over there.

Grand Old Plantation: Rednecks, tramps and thieves.

From Gene Lyons's latest column, re the spying scandal:

"Bush asks us to trust him, our wise and benevolent leader. To Republicans inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, I offer this
rebuttal : 'President Hillary Rodham Clinton.'”

Mr. Bungle:

The Cardiacs are as English as can be. An intense cult phenom on Britain and Europe but virtually no exposure here. All their stuff is on their own label; they never made Concession One to the majors.

They're kind of a cross between early 80s second-generation English punk and early 70s progrock. Along with the Sex Pistols and XTC (XTC is who they most superficially resemble), they count as their influences Gong, Gentle Giant, Frank Zappa and early Genesis.

Some critics have dubbed their music "pronk" -- a cross between punk and progressive, and it's an apt term. They constantly change keys and some of their timing patterns are virtually impossible to count. Their leader, Tim Smith (from Surrey) hates the term, though. He considers them a pop band (and, truly, they out-McCartney McCartney in a way that would make Lenny Kravitz break down and cry).

I'm a hardcore progrock fan -- the more complex, the better as far as I'm concerned. And I think Tim Smith is a stone-genius.

Bob

"religious fundamentalist nutjob in a cave"

Well, our religious fundamentalist nutjob in a house went after the one in a cave, er sort of, but became sidetracked into going a secular nutjob in a temple.
So one of the nutjobs is still in a cave.
Another is still in a house.
The other is in a cage.

The eternal saga of the nutjobs continues. Stay tuned.

Going after a secular nutjob - Preview.

Now, our nutjob is going in circles lashing out at perceived "Nutcrackers" - sorta goes with the season.

Regarding that Chicago Tribune op-ed by John Schmidt, a few comments are in order. Schmidt wrote:

Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that "the Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

There's only one problem: at the time that Gorelick testified in 1994, that in fact was the case. FISA did not at that time block warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes. Gorelick was simply explaining what the state of the law was, not commenting on any inherent powers of the presidency. FISA was amended in 1995, with Clinton's approval, to include physical searches.

Schmidt also wrote:

In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the ... courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority."

There are a couple of problems with this. The first is that that is a selective (and dishonest) excerpt of the original quote. The full quote is:

The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President’s power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government’s contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable. [Emphasis added]

When you look at the quote, you quickly realize that the FISA appeals court was specifically referring to the Truong court. The trouble is that the Truong case preceded the passage of the FISA law, and thus did not address the issue of whether the president's authority could be curtailed by Congressional action. Hence, the citation is irrelevant.

In addition, note the other items in bold. The FISA appeals court is noting that the issue of whether FISA imposes limits on the authority of the president is not an issue in the case and, hence, would not be decided by the outcome of the case. Again, the citation is completely irrelevant. Schmidt goes on to write:

Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms.

As noted above, the citations in this op-ed do not support this assertion. Gorelick was emphatically not asserting that Clinton "retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms," nor has anyone been able to find a citation from Clinton asserting this.

Schmidt also muddies the water by bringing up the issue of whether the September 14, 2001 Congressional resolution specifically allows the president to ignore FISA. Unfortunately, he weasels out of this, offering no evidence, simply stating that the Bush administration believes this to be true. That's hardly a compelling argument. Schmidt then writes:

FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation.

Unfortunately, Schmidt offers virtually nothing to support this assertion. Moreover, Schmidt completely ignores the point that if the point is true, the Bush administration could easily have asked Congress to amend or repeal FISA, so the point is irrelevant.

Given Schmidt's dishonesty on these fundamental arguments, I would have to say that I find the op-ed to be somewhat less than convincing.

BTW -

My initial thought after reading Ignatius was "You idiot, once again you are trying to read people's motives and base your analysis on that".

We can all speculate about what the President was or was not trying to do. But we know what he did: He has failed to make the country any safer. According to the 9-11 commission, the government has gotten more or less a D on preparedness (averaging out those Fs). And according to most people in the world, the US is in much more danger now, because so many more people hate Americans.

And please spare us the "we haven't been attacked in 4 years" nonsense. First, Al Queda has been killing lots more people in strikes around the world since then. They had never hit the US before 9-11 at all and there hadn't been a big strike in 7 years before that ('94 to '01). 9-11 was still the biggest strike ever in the US, and it happened on this administration's watch.

OK, I couldn't resist: here's my speculation on motives.

Have any of you worked with an incompetent before? You know, the mouthy dolt who screws up just about anything through a combination of arrogance, laziness and stupidity?

What happens when they get caught bungling? Don't they normally try to duck it, and when they get caught:
1) Change the subject,
2) Squelch anything they can,
3) Cover their tracks,
4) Blame everyone all over the place,
5) Try to intimidate those pointing out the mistakes, and
6) Stir controversy to distract from the mistake?

Does all that sound a wee bit familiar?

For those interested in serious legal analysis, Prof. Cass Sunstein (a liberal law prof at U-Chicago) thinks that there may well be subsantial merit to the claim by the President that the NSA eavsedropping was legal and authorized by the Congress:

"This authorization clearly supported the war in Afghanistan. It also clearly justifies the use of force against Al Qaeda. In the Hamdi case, the Supreme Court added that the AUMF authorizes the detention of enemy combatants -- notwithstanding 18 USC 4001(a), which requires an Act of Congress to support executive detention. In the Court's view, the AUMF stands as the relevant Act of Congress, authorizing detention. It is therefore reasonable to say that the AUMF, by authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate force," also authorizes surveillance of those associated with Al Qaeda or any other organizations that "planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks" of September 11.

"The reason is that surveillance, including wiretapping, is reasonably believed to be an incident of the use of force. It standardly occurs during war. If the President's wiretapping has been limited to those reasonably believed to be associated with Al Qaeda and its affiliates -- as indeed he has said -- then the Attorney General's argument is entirely plausible. (The AUMF would not permit wiretapping of those without any connection to nations, organizations, and persons associated with the September 11 attacks.)"

Sunstein's analysis -- at least the excerpt DBL provides -- fails to account for the express wartime provisions of the FISA, and explain why, if the AUMF is to be viewed as having any effect at all on the application of FISA, it does not merely allow the use of those provisions but goes vastly beyond them to allow any wiretapping the President wants, so long as it is notionally directed at groups targetted by the AUMF.

Sunstein suggests that not only does a meally-mouthed, weasel-worded "authorization for the use of force" have the full effect of a formal declaration of war, as some have argued prior to the FISA issue, but goes farther to argue, implicitly, that it has greater effect on expanding executive power.

This argument is, I think, pretty clearly untenable.

Bob asks me, Do you consider Islamist terrorism an existential threat to the USA?

Bob, Islamist terrorism is a real threat to us. I saw it on television on 9/11. Prior to that, Islamist terrorism had struck at our country's interests and people in a number of overseas attacks. I recall the attack on the USS Cole, the Khyber barracks bombing, and the bombings of our embassies in Africa.

I also recall the murders of Americans such as Daniel Pearl.

How 'existential' is that? Depends on your point of view, I suppose, but it certainly is real and exists today. Were we to pick up and go home from Iraq (and from the rest of the Middle East, which would be necessary if we left Iraq), al-Qaeda and related Islamist terror groups would celebrate and then begin plotting new ways to attack us. I'm comfortably certain of that assessment given what I read from a variety of sources.

Does that answer your question?

The WaPo article confirms what conservatives have been saying about CIA since 2000. They are adamantly anti-Bush. There are probably a couple of reasons. The deadwood runs the place. If Valerie Plame is an example of the expertise and attitude, I rest my case.

They are also on the side of the "realists" who want to deal with the dictators. The Saudis are offering good jobs to retirees and there is none of this messy dealing with ex-patriots like Chalabi who may or may not be trustworthy.

Those of us who have read the history of intelligence work, or even good spy novels, know that agents and refugees are often not the type you would take home to mother.

Stanfield Turner gutted the human intelligence side of CIA in the 70s, what was left after Frank Church finished with them. That's what we have left. Clerks who read foreign language newspapers or satellite photos. None of this evaluation of real spy stuff.

And once something like the NSA story gets out, the insiders start asking their favorite reporter to lunch so they can say "I didn't do it."

The same is probably true of the generals he refers to. A lot of them are probably what Hackworth referred to as "perfumed princes" who hate Rummy because he's making them stay til 5 every day.

Do you know how Rochefort, who broke the Japanese code and won the battle of Midway for us finished the war ? Read about it sometime. Bureaucrats hate warriors.

Those of us who have read the history of intelligence work, or even good spy novels,...

Everything I learned about the world, I learned from Tom Clancy.

'nuff said.

cmdicely writes, Sunstein suggests that not only does a meally-mouthed, weasel-worded "authorization for the use of force" have the full effect of a formal declaration of war, ...

I recall Joe Biden's statement on the AUOF for Afghanistan: it was equivalent of a declaration of war, and he ought to know, because he wrote it.

An AUOF means whatever Congress says it means. It transfers power(s) to the President, lays down conditions, etc. It makes war-fighting possible.

There's nothing magical about a 'declaration of war'. The Constitution in Article I gives Congress the right to declare war but doesn't further define it. The Federalist papers and common usage at the time in English law gave a declaration wide meaning.

If Congress were to consider and pass a declaration of war today, it would mean whatever Congress, in the preamble, definitions and body of the act, says it would mean. It might transfer exactly the same powers to the president that an AUOF would transfer. Or not.

I think you're hung up on words, hoping that they'll form some sort of magical incantation to use against GWB. That doesn't work.

hank wrote: I think that in 100 or 200 years historians will look back on this era and find that the best way to describe U.S. foreign policy will be "aimless."

I think that in 100 or 200 years, if there are any historians, they will look back on this era and find that the best way to describe U.S. foreign policy will be "singlemindedly focused on establishing control of the world's oil supplies".

I recall Joe Biden's statement on the AUOF for Afghanistan: it was equivalent of a declaration of war, and he ought to know, because he wrote it.

The statement of a drafter is one indicia of legislative intent, to be sure, but it is not dispositive, particularly if it conflicts with the explicit text of the law. That being said, I think -- as I've said many times before -- that it is a tenable argument, though by no means certainly clear, that the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs both constitute Constitutional, conditional declarations of war. (The fill-in-the-blank nature of the 2001 AUMF, I would argue, makes the argument less tenable in that case, as, if constructed as a open-ended declaration of war, it might well constitute an unconstitutional delegation of Congress Article I power.) What is untenable is that it was intended by Congress to authorize searches that would not be authorized (absent express additional language) by a declaration of war, given that FISA already contains expanded search authority for the executive triggered by declared war.

An AUOF means whatever Congress says it means.

To the extent that this is accurate, its not particularly useful in resolving anything here, which involves looking at language of Congress not directly addressing the question being asked -- the effect on search powers under FISA -- and determining what the AUMF is intended to mean in that regard. If one takes it as "equivalent to a declaration of war", as you suggest, that would mean that, under FISA, the President would be allowed to order warrantless surveillance without the usual requirements for warrantless surveillance under FISA for a period of 15 calendar days (see 18 USC § 1811.)

Clearly, even the construction of the AUMF as being exactly legally equivalent to a declaration of war is not adequate to justify the President's actions at issue here.

Tbrosz: before doing any more damage on this thread, perhaps you'd like to clean up the messes you've left previously, FISA court, World War II, take your pick. Come on, we are waiting for "actual sentient comment(s)" from you!

Steve White:

> Bob asks me, Do you consider Islamist
> terrorism an existential threat to the USA?

> Bob, Islamist terrorism is a real threat to us.

I didn't ask you if it was a real threat. There are lots of real
threats to the US, both inside and outside our borders. There's
McVeigh-style domestic terrorism (including threats on abortion
providers), inner-city gangland warfare (which has claimed many more
American lives than the Islamists), the methamphetamine epidemic
and plain old violent crime. Then figure in auto accidents, natural
disasters (Katrina dwarfs the impact of 9/11), medical disasters.
Externally there are still nuclear-armed hostile nations, concerted
economic action against American interests, the rising wave of
Latin American IMF rejectionism and anti-American agitation, etc.

Where exactly does Islamist terrorism fit into the bigger picture?

> I saw it on television on 9/11.

We all did. I lost two weeks of work because
I was in a near-clinical depression over it.

> Prior to that, Islamist terrorism had struck at our country's
> interests and people in a number of overseas attacks. I
> recall the attack on the USS Cole, the Khyber barracks
> bombing, and the bombings of our embassies in Africa.

Again, we all did. I also recall the
murder of 265 Marines in a Lebanon bunker.

> I also recall the murders of Americans such as Daniel Pearl.

Sure. I don't think anybody here intends to minimize any
of this -- only put it in its proper context now that the
trauma of 9/11 is behind us and we're beginning as a nation
to think a little more rationally about the subject. You
know -- the way we did when we realized that interning all
those Japanese-Americans in WW2, while understandable, was
not only morally wrong, but of questionable security value.

> How 'existential' is that? Depends on your point of view, I suppose,

No, it's a pretty objective calculus. The Soviet Union had nuclear
missiles and an anti-Western ideological agenda, plus millions
of men under arms. That qualifies as an existential threat.

Islamists have made opportunistic attacks on American interests
but are hardly a sophisticated tactical enemy. Their ideology
and suicide tactics are inherently limiting; they promise nothing
tangible to the recruits they motivate with righteous anger.

While there's a chance that they might get their hands on some
really nasty weaponry, it's a chance, not an imminent threat.
As anti-modernists they don't associate easily with purveyors of
the most up-to-date technologies. In fact, no WMD attacks have
ever been mounted by jihadis, even tactically on a small scale.

> but it certainly is real and exists today. Were we to
> pick up and go home from Iraq (and from the rest of the
> Middle East, which would be necessary if we left Iraq),

It wouldn't be necessary at all; we're certainly not intending
to pack up from Kuwait or Qatar whatever happens in Iraq.

> al-Qaeda and related Islamist terror groups
> would celebrate and then begin plotting new
> ways to attack us. I'm comfortably certain of that
> assessment given what I read from a variety of sources.

As you probably read during the Iraqi elections, Sunni
insurgent groups were threatening foreign jihadis with death
if they disrupted the voting. By killing so many Muslims,
Zarqawi has worn out his welcome in Iraq. Remember, Sunni
Salafist believe in killing fellow Muslim apostates. They
wouldn't last long in a nation run by a Shi'ite majority.

> Does that answer your question?

Yes it has. I don't think you made a very persuasive argument
that al Qaeda qualifies as an existential threat to the US.

But I appreciate that you shared your reasoning.

Bob

"Those of us who have read the history of intelligence work, or even good spy novels,...

Everything I learned about the world, I learned from Tom Clancy."

I was thinking more of le Carre' who knows some tradecraft. Clancy is excellent on navy and less so on general military. Have you read any of it ?

"'nuff said.

Posted by: craigie "

Yeah. I suspect you get your tradecraft info from Vanity Fair.

Steve White:

I overstated the case. Katrina doesn't "dwarf" the impact of 9/11 -- but I would argue that their economic and social impacts are certainly comparable.

Bob

craigie,

Go easy on the poor Doc MikeyK. He is still upset because when he was in the Corps, he was in charge of Heads at Camp Pendleton. If they were not spitshined by 1700 hours, he would be late for Happy Hour at Ted's Capri Lounge - He hated to miss the guys, dance and play hide the Gung-Ho.

The Federalist papers and common usage at the time in English law gave a declaration wide meaning.

Yeah. I've tried mentioning these contexts when talking about the ninth amendment. Sorry, they don't have currency any more (especially among Federalist Society members, oddly enough).

You can wave your hands about the supposed vagueness of what a "declaration of war" would look like. Unfortunately for you, there are some examples on file. In fact, there are certain automatic provisions attached to passing one, which I suspect was the most popular reason for leaving "war" in the metaphor box after 9/11.

Works well enough.
.

Bob writes in response to me:

I didn't ask you if it was a real threat. There are lots of real
threats to the US, both inside and outside our borders. There's
McVeigh-style domestic terrorism (including threats on abortion
providers), inner-city gangland warfare (which has claimed many more American lives than the Islamists), the methamphetamine epidemic and plain old violent crime. Then figure in auto accidents, natural disasters (Katrina dwarfs the impact of 9/11), medical disasters. Externally there are still nuclear-armed hostile nations, concerted economic action against American interests, the rising wave of Latin American IMF rejectionism and anti-American agitation, etc.

Where exactly does Islamist terrorism fit into the bigger picture?

If you're going to list all the potential causes of death, you'll eventually hit 100%. You forgot cancer, AIDS and the flu.

Islamist terrorism is one of the larger threats to the U.S. It easily has the ability to kill thousands of Americans as they've already demonstrated, and they don't need especially high-tech weaponry to do so. Should they gain access to WMD (you scoff, but it's something to consider), they will kill many more Americans.

There have been a couple of abortion providers murdered (and their killer is in jug). The Latin Americans may end up making faces at us. Islamofascism (because that's what it is) and Islamist terror has the potential to be much greater, and that's what we have to react to.

There's an old equation that covers this:

capability x intent = threat

The British have the capability to nuke a number of our cities, but they have no intent to do so -- the threat equals zero. Likewise, Robert Mugabe hates us pretty well, but he has no capability to do anything about it -- again, the threat equals zero.

But Osama proved he could hurt us. And he hates us. So the threat equation doesn't equal zero anymore, at least until al-Qaeda is wiped out.

Likewise Saddam clearly had intent to get away with whatever he could, and the capability part was an open question (we now see it was close to zero, but we didn't see that in 2002, or in 1998). The threat was non-zero.

Now quibble as you like, assign whatever values you want to a given situation, the basic assessment still holds. The question is, how much of a threat do you tolerate?

During the Cold War, we tolerated a threat that was substantially greater than zero, because the consequences of trying to fix it (we thought, until Reagan came along) was even greater. Today, we tolerate a non-zero threat from China because the consequences of trying to fix that directly could be catastrophic.

Islamist terrorism is a non-zero threat. The threat could be quite large if we allow them to have a base of operations (like Afghanistan was), if we allow them to link up to terror-supporting states like Iran, Syria or (until recently) Iraq, if we allow them to work with rogue states like North Korea. The threat could be smaller if we conduct certain operations, etc.

After 9/11, how much of a threat are you willing to tolerate from Islamist terrorism? Perhaps you're willing to tolerate more than I am -- I suspect, given your laundry list in your note, that you are. I am not, and I'll support a President from either party who prosecutes aggressively a war on Islamist terror. Likewise, I'll oppose a President from either party who decides to tolerate the threat. It's an important issue to me. I'm likely to vote, in 2008, based on who is willing to fight terror more effectively.

Now is that real or existential? You're the wordsmith, you decide.

During the Cold War, we tolerated a threat that was substantially greater than zero, because the consequences of trying to fix it (we thought, until Reagan came along) was even greater.

WTF? Its hardly like we first started confronting Soviet Communism rather than passively tolerating it under Reagan. Making this statement demolishes any tiny shred of credibility you might otherwise have had (not that, given your past history, you had any to start with.)

Steve White:

> Islamist terrorism is one of the larger threats to
> the U.S. It easily has the ability to kill thousands
> of Americans as they've already demonstrated, and they
> don't need especially high-tech weaponry to do so.

After 9/11, the CW was how diabolically ingenious the attack was.
It really wasn't at all; all it took (aside from raw fanaticism) was
a bunch of fake visas and driver's licenses, a modicum of a command
of English, a few vanity commercial jet flying lessons and the
unimaginable brutality to cut up flight attendants with box cutters.

It blindsided us. Arguably Bush was asleep at the switch; I'm not
going to go into all the second-guessing about the August PDB, the
screaming FBI agent, etc.; doubtless you've heard that all before.

What did we do afterwards? Well, airline security drastically
changed. Are our ports secured? Our borders? Not at all.

These are the mundane things we could be doing,
and which we are not, to avoid another attack.

> Should they gain access to WMD (you scoff, but it's
> something to consider), they will kill many more Americans.

I'm not exactly scoffing. It's something to consider, but also
to evaluate in practical terms. Once again, no jihadist I've ever
heard of has mounted an attack with UCW, let alone WMD. Are there
ex-Soviet agents out there willing to sell some leftover goodies
to the highest bidder? Probably. Might North Korea do the same?
Possibly. Do we need to surveill these foreign agents? Absolutely.

But do we let the fear of this keep us awake at night? No. Not
if we're psychologically healthy people and live by our freedom.

And do we need to give the president unlimited powers to address this
threat as he sees fit with no independent oversight? Absolutely not.

> There have been a couple of abortion providers
> murdered (and their killer is in jug).

Don't forget the 250 people blown up in the Murrah Building.

> The Latin Americans may end up making faces at us.

And we might wind up someday going to war over Venezuelan oil.

> Islamofascism (because that's what it is) and
> Islamist terror has the potential to be much
> greater, and that's what we have to react to.

Islamofascism is a term that doesn't parse. The authoritarianism
of conservative Islam is only in the most superficial way equatable
to the authoritarianism of fascism. When Saddam set up a fascist
state, his model was Stalin, his ideology Nasserite pah-Arabism.
He stayed away from Islam because Islam is accountable to a higher
authority. Iranian theocracy has no irredentist ambitions, nor
does Saudi theocracy. The caliphate ideology is a deviant modern
phenomenon; no Islamic country endorsed it since the ouster of
the Taliban. Since this ideology condones the killing of so-
called apostate Muslims, it is considered a grave threat in the
most conservative Muslim regimes. Take Saudi Arabia seriously
when it says that it fears al Qaeda every bit as much as we do.

As for Islamic terrorism, I have yet to see an argument
that persuades me we should treat it any differently
than any other murderous international criminal cult.

> But Osama proved he could hurt us. And he hates
> us. So the threat equation doesn't equal zero
> anymore, at least until al-Qaeda is wiped out.

Well, a lot of threats to America don't equal zero. Do we speak of
wiping out street gangs? Do we even consider it possible anymore
to win the war on drugs? Yet we consider it possible to "wipe out"
al Qaeda. This doesn't parse; despite the most sophisticated military
and surveillance in the world, we simply cannot kill every Islamist
fanatic who has burned with the lust to kill Americans. What exactly
is "membership" in al Qaeda? Do they take a blood oath? Is there an
initiation ceremony? Or does it only entail reading jihadi websites
and becoming divinely inspired? In truth, we honestly don't know.

> Likewise Saddam clearly had intent to get away with
> whatever he could, and the capability part was an open
> question (we now see it was close to zero, but we didn't
> see that in 2002, or in 1998). The threat was non-zero.

I saw it clearly in the fall of '02 and all I had to go by was what
I read in the MSM and on the NYT Iraq forum -- which was full of
raging paranoia in the wake of 9/11. I read the Judith Miller
stories and just shook my head; I *knew* they were bullshit from
the way she handled her sources. I would have voted against the IWR
and I don't know a soul in my social circle who'd have done otherwise.

> Now quibble as you like, assign whatever values you
> want to a given situation, the basic assessment still holds.
> The question is, how much of a threat do you tolerate?

That is precisely the question.

> During the Cold War, we tolerated a threat that was
> substantially greater than zero, because the consequences
> of trying to fix it (we thought, until Reagan came along)

You mean until Gorbachev came along.

> was even greater. Today, we tolerate a non-zero
> threat from China because the consequences of
> trying to fix that directly could be catastrophic.

And we similarly tolerated an at least rhetorical threat
from Saddam because *he* knew that the consequences of
confronting us would be -- as they were -- catastrophic.

> Islamist terrorism is a non-zero threat. The
> threat could be quite large if we allow them to
> have a base of operations (like Afghanistan was),

I certainly never opposed the ouster of one of the most backward,
dysfunctional regimes extant. If they trained the Saudi 9/11
soldiers there, then take out the training camps -- end of story.

What we should have done is poured all of our resources into
making *that* country the model democracy in the region.

Now with Iraq as well, we've bitten off more than we can chew.

> if we allow them to link up to terror-supporting
> states like Iran, Syria or (until recently) Iraq,

There's regional resistance to Israel, and then there's international
jihadist terrorism. The right-wing punditsphere likes to conflate
them, but they aren't the same thing. Hezbollah is Shi'ite, but it
threatens only Israel. No Shi'ite is a member of al Qaeda, because
that Salafist ideology is strictly Sunni and is much more radical
and anti-statist than the repressive statist conservatives in Iran.

By this yardstick, Iraq never supported the kind of terrorism
that threatend the US, even if they did send stipends to
the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or supported
Ansar al Islam in the north to harrass the Kurds.

> if we allow them to work with rogue states like North Korea.
> The threat could be smaller if we conduct certain operations, etc.

North Korea is insular and paranoid, and in fact even a worse basket
case Stalinist regime than was Saddam's Iraq. And -- when we took
our eye off the ball to obsess over Iraq -- they got themselves nukes.

But North Korea has zero connections or affinity to Islamism
and the threat of coordination is probably exaggerated, since
Kim, like Saddam, is most of all interested in surviving.

> After 9/11, how much of a threat are you willing to tolerate from
> Islamist terrorism? Perhaps you're willing to tolerate more than I
> am -- I suspect, given your laundry list in your note, that you are.

Are you more willing than I to tolerate gangland homicide?

I don't consider it a qualitative difference to be killed or
grievously injured by a terrorist explosion vs to be killed
or grievously injured by a gangland drive-by shooting. And
since there was a driveby down the street from me two years
ago (we have Bloods and Crips in my Northeastern city), I can
reasonably calculate that the odds of the latter are much higher.

> I am not, and I'll support a President from either party who
> prosecutes aggressively a war on Islamist terror. Likewise, I'll
> oppose a President from either party who decides to tolerate the
> threat. It's an important issue to me. I'm likely to vote, in
> 2008, based on who is willing to fight terror more effectively.

You're certainly entitled, Steve. You can support a
candidate for whatever single issue you'd like, no matter
how good or bad your rationale is, this being America and all.

But simply telling me you're going to do this does not equate
to a substantive argument for why others should do it as well.

I'd still like to know why Islamist terrorism exists in a
special catetory of threat. You're a medical doctor; I can't
write your motives off to simpleminded xenophobia or racism.

> Now is that real or existential? You're the wordsmith, you decide.

"Existential" has no fancy philosophical meaning
here, it just means a threat to one's existence.

Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the USSR threatend our existence.

Al Qaeda does not.

If you think it does -- you're as crazy as a loon.

Bob

Bob, one is not 'crazy as a loon' to think that al Qaeda could threaten our existence when they've already killed several thousand Americans (embassies + barracks + Cole + 9/11).

It seems that you think there is some threshold: they need to kill x number of Americans to be a bonafide, 'existential' threat, and they haven't yet met that threshold.

It seems inconsistent that you would dismiss their threat to us and yet worry about gangland killings. Tookie only killed four after all. And while the Bloods and Crips are a problem for your neighborhood (one I hope you and your neighbors are addressing), they're not into wholesale death.

For me at least, that's the issue with Islamist terror: they're not into retail killing, though they're happy to do it. They want death on a large scale. That makes them qualitatively different than the Crips and Bloods -- for the gangs, large scale killing is bad for business.

Finally, you're mistaken about Saddam and Islam. Saddam embraced Islam, particularly in his final years in power. He did so in part cynically; it was a useful tool for him, and Saddam is ever practical. It was also genuine in that it formed, along with Ba'athism, a big part of his core beliefs.

In the West we have this sense that hard-core socialism, fascism and communism are incompatible with religion (and I think that's true). The Islamists don't have that problem. They have no problem at all being completely Islamic and completely fascist at the same time. Their religious beliefs, particularly the Salafists, fit a fascist model of economic and social control very well (I note that the Ba'athists, even when they claimed to be socialists, really weren't by any standard Western definition). It's a mistake to think that the jihadis, because they're religious zealots, aren't also fascist at their core.

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