Bill Bans NSA Eavesdropping 424
An anonymous reader writes "The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now government agencies are only allowed to access your private communications under terms of FISA. 'As the Senate Report noted, FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it." The Bill ends plans by the Bush Administration that would give the NSA the freedom to pry into the lives of ordinary Americans. The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about 'modernization' and 'technology neutrality,' the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them.'"
Premature Especulation (Score:5, Insightful)
What's that smell (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't we already have this (Score:3, Insightful)
"Amendment 4
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and
no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized."
Re:Premature Especulation (Score:1, Insightful)
Veto Coming? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Errr (Score:1, Insightful)
Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
This bill doesn't really change anything legally, but when it comes time for the third branch of government to have their say on the issue, Congress' intentions will be unambiguous: yes, they do mean that FISA is the ONLY way you can do domestic wiretapping.
It would be nice if laws could be simple and unambiguous, like a well-written piece of software. Instead, laws are written over a long time by a lot of different people, just like real software. Software crashes; laws get inconsistencies. You can point it out for laughs but when it's your phone they're tapping, or your right to life/liberty/property sitting in the ambiguity, it's not so funny.
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:4, Insightful)
dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Legislators and lawyers are the coders.
And you thought <despised> had cruft/stability/performance issues...
Re:"Outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping." (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US, making something illegal is but the first step in outlawing that action or thing. The next step is to outlaw it, but even then, the thing has to be ostracized, vilified, hog tied, circumcised, deep fried, and then finally, it can be made to be a "bad thing", which is often punishable by a lot of hooting, halooing, and in more serious cases a downright hullabaloo; but only when it is made a "terrible thing" (a much more involved and convoluted process, not to mention expensive) are there any real consequences.
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
I smell... (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, it's not going to have an effect on the current President.
-Rick
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that reasoning is that there isn't another law that grants this authority to the President.
This bill doesn't really change anything legally, but when it comes time for the third branch of government to have their say on the issue, Congress' intentions will be unambiguous: yes, they do mean that FISA is the ONLY way you can do domestic wiretapping.
President Bush is quite fond of "signing statements". When President Carter signed FISA, he issued a signing statement saying that FISA is the only way you can do domestic wiretapping.
It would be nice if laws could be simple and unambiguous, like a well-written piece of software. Instead, laws are written over a long time by a lot of different people, just like real software. Software crashes; laws get inconsistencies. You can point it out for laughs but when it's your phone they're tapping, or your right to life/liberty/property sitting in the ambiguity, it's not so funny.
This particular law is already unambiguous, and the administration has been unambiguously violating it.
Re:I smell... (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that the USA is always at war and that pretty much anything seems to count as "national security" means that on an average day they've already broken several laws before breakfast.
This bill is Congress trying to put a stop to the farce. The only fly in the ointment is that no law is final until the president signs it, and he's the one abusing the law. Is he really going to sign away his own powers? Based on his track record ("Patriot act", etc.) I doubt it.
"What a world" (Score:4, Insightful)
FISA is unconstitutional (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It is about a power that was never made available to the federal government in the first place. Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional, period. That includes FISA. FISA represents exactly the same kind of reasoning as the ridiculous topsy-turvey interpretation of the commerce clause. The premise is that wiretapping itself does no harm, completely ignoring the breach of your security. Here is the fourth amendment:
You'll note the order there - it isn't an accident: first they get the warrant, then then they can search, seize and generally violate you security. This is the basis for telecommunications law that outlaws wiretapping in the first place.
FISA is based upon the very peculiar notion that they can first tap, and then ask for a warrant, and if a warrant is not issued, then they just "forget" about the tap and - somehow - everything is just peachy. But clearly, it isn't. Your security and privacy was violated, without a warrant. This of course is entirely aside from the fact that FISA is a rubber-stamp organization; just look at the statistics for warrants granted as opposed to warrants refused. Consider further the fact that I am not allowed to put a tap on your phone line. For any reason. I'm not even allowed to listen to a cell phone conversation you broadcast on an analog mode cell connection or an RF-based portable home phone. This is because it is an invasion of your privacy; and because your security is threatened. It isn't because I didn't get a warrant (I can't, as I am a citizen, not a member of law enforcement) and it isn't because I could get a warrant later, if it seemed like I needed to - I still can't. No, it is simply because your security is guaranteed by the constitution, and it is very clear that such an action would be in violation. But this is exactly what the government does with FISA. They don't bother to get a warrant, they just listen whenever they decide they want to. Clearly, FISA is unconstitutional.
Lastly, all arguments that the constitution is irrelevant here somehow because of "need" are false. If there is a real need, the constitution contains the tools required so that it may be modified such that those needs may be met. No, this is simply an end-run around the intent of the document without having to be inconvenienced by its restrictions. Remember, the constitution is the constituting authority for the federal (and state, with regard to amendments 1-10, as per the 14th) government, and any action that is forbidden on the one hand, or not an enumerated power in the case of the feds, is both unconstitutional and lacking any legitimate authority. Don't confuse power with authority.
Re:Of course they haven't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Except he doesn't. Congress hasn't declared war. By his logic every president in the last 30 years could spy on Americans without warrant because we're in a "war on drugs." We're not legally at war until declared by Congress. We're just technically at war, and reality has no bearing in the legal system.
Re:"Outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping." (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does not your Fourth Amendment rule out blanket wiretapping of your own citizens without a warrant? Making this wiretapping illegal?
Perhaps I'm reading this too simplistically or something. Are there some sort of "wartime" rules that rise above this Fourth Amendment?
Note the sage: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every branch
--
The fundamental foolishness of government is that, short of bloody revolution, it lacks some aspects of a degenerative feedback loop to stabilize it.
Separating the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the government is certainly a step in the right direction. Some might argue that the balance of federal, state, and local separation has been screwed since the Civil War. (Certainly slavery was false, and a societal crack running back to the Constitution; not trying to say the Civil War was unjustified, merely that the shift from 'these United States' to 'the United States' is subtle and important)
Internally to the three branches of government though, the question is this: do their size/complexity reflect the requirements of society, or as Civ IV so brilliantly put it, is: an accurate appraisal?
People are missing the point: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no war. War is a legal term, with a defined enemy, defined conditions for a win/loss, recognizable leadership structure for the enemy, etc. War has to be decalred against a nation-stare War can olny be declared by Congress.
Congress did not declare war on any nation. There is no defined conditions for winning or losing (or even a "screw you, I am going home!" situation).
The war on terror is like the "war on drugs". A war on a concept can never end or be won.
We do have combat zones and deaths. However, "war" is not needed to have those.
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
To stretch the analogy to the breaking point, it is as if each individual x86 CPU manufactured by Intel had a random distribution of computation errors such that 1+1 usually equaled something close 2, but occasionally you got one so far out of spec that it would compute 1+1 = i.
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
So it seems that it is Bush who has confused "legal" with his own preferences, and that you somehow believe that this is true, that his preferences define legality. Well they don't. The law is perfectly clear, and it is perfectly clear that Bush is breaking it because he has stated that he has done so.
BTW, is the something that someone could do impeachment? If you're going to use the "if nobody has done anything to him, it couldn't have been illegal" argument you might want to take into account political realities.
Re:Of course they haven't. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a very good point. For a while now my personal emails have had this sig:
"When the president does it that means that it is not illegal."
- Richard Nixon on domestic surveillance, 5/19/1977
"Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely."
- George W. Bush on domestic surveillance, 12/19/2005
I think it's pretty clear that Bush subscribes to the philosophy of presidential power that you describe. I believe it was Frontline that reported how Bush, Cheney, etc. felt that the president needed to regain his power from congress.
It's a real shame that congress' only recourse is impeachment. (I've yet to understand what censure really does to an already unpopular president.) It's also a shame that congresscritters view themselves as Republican first, congresspeople second, then representatives third. This makes them adverse to opposing presidents of their own party.
Re:FISA is unconstitutional (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, how exactly do you have a warrant "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" when you're not searching a place and no persons or things are being seized. Unless telephone conversations have some sort of copyright protection and you consider making a copy as seizure, then again you are on shaky ground.
I'm not saying there can't be laws with these protections, I'm just saying basing them on the 4th amendment seems like a stretch.
It's actually illegal for the NSA or any government agency to tap any communication between US citizens whether inside our country or not. However, the idea of giving constitutional protections to everyone who makes it inside our borders, even those planning to do us harm, seems like a more serious threat than any amount of illegal wiretapping.
Re:You've got that kinda right. (Score:4, Insightful)
How is FISA going to approve tens of thousands of warrants?
Irrelevent, because even if they could issue 10,000 warrants, 9,999 of those search requests would be completely and utterly without any merit whatsoever because the government had absolutely no reason to think that person had any useful information. FISA would not issue any of those warrants individually, why on earth would they issue them en-masse?
FISA or any other court wouldn't issue warrants for the kind of searches Bush wants. They are meritless searches. They are unconstitutional searches. They are illegal searches. That's the real reason FISA can't issue such a warrant.
Separate from FISA itself, is computerized monitoring of millions of phone calls as intrusive as a human agent listening to a particular person's phone calls? I think we'd all say no. So should we be willing to accept a lower burden on the governement for this sort of automated search?
Oh, I highly disagree. I think monitoring millions of phone calls of innocent people is WAY more intrusive than the monitoring of a single person who the agent has reason to think is doing something illegal sufficient to convince a judge that a warrant should be granted. The whole reason we have the 4th Ammendment is so that the police can't just search everyone in the desperate hope of finding a crime. Now that computers have let them do this to literally millions of people, you think it's less intrusive?!
And maybe you feel better if it's only a computer listening to you, but how exactly do you know that an agent didn't decide to listen in on your call? What do you think all that data does sitting on NSA computers; you think the NSA agents can't access it?
The 4th amendment was written in a time when 'search' meant agents of the government came into your home or business and actually PHYSICALLY SEARCHED it. Automated search of electronic communication could not possibly have been considered then, and is thus something we need to consider now.
Or a "search" meant agents of the government read your mail. What's the difference between automated search of electronic communication, and a huge room in the back of the post office with federal agents reading the mail of random U.S. citizens, other than e-mail and NSA computers allows many more random citizens to be illegally searched?
The great thing about the founding fathers is that they worded things such that they described basic principles and not specific technologies, and thus we don't actually have much to consider. The invention of the telegraph and the phone didn't do much to change the way this was viewed. Neither has the computer.
But you're right, we should consider automatic en-masse surveilance without a warrant. Hmm... nope, still unconstitutional. Well that was easy. Time for tea.
Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)
And where does the Constitution say that?
It doesn't. Why doesn't it? Because in 1789, there was no such thing as electronic communication.
In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that the protections of the fourth amendment applied to electronic searches as well as physical searches. But you must keep in mind than in 1967, electronic searches pretty much meant having people listen to other people's phone calls.
It's now 2007. Electronic searches mean a lot more than just people listening to other people's phone calls. Whether a computer monitoring all phone calls constitutes an illegal search or not is not a given. It is not unreasonable that the courts could say that computerized monitoring of phone calls is not due the same 4th amendment protections as human monitoring. Or they could say that it is. But neither has happened yet.
In the meantime, a law which says you can't use computer systems to monitor masses of phone calls isn't a bad thing - it makes it illegal now, definitively, without waiting for court interpretation of the scope of 1789's 4th amendment in 2007.
Sure I support the troops. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess there are differing levels of support...our retard-in-chief seems to see things in a binary fashion tho.
Why this bill is important... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
The standards for wiretapping in a law enforcement capacity are different than the standards for wiretapping foreign agents in an intelligence capacity. Are you claiming they are precisely the same?
Are you also claiming that the penalty for this wiretapping should simply be that the evidence can't be used in a criminal trial? Since the goal is to prevent terrorism rather than to win in court rooms, that's not much of a problem.
Care to come up with a relevant example and some case law where a court has upheld a signing statement...
There's no reason a court would take the case. The signing statements have no effect. What would a court say? "We disagree with the opinion expressed in the President's signing statement"?
Re:Actually, no, we don't already have this. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they'd had phones back then, you can bet your ass they would have included them!
The idea is that the government has to leave you alone unless it can articulate some reason that a judge would find convincing that you have committed a crime. *That* is the essence of the 4th amendment. Anything more than listening to you as you walk down the street should require a warrant. The framers knew the value of keeping the government weak.
You don't know that. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know that.
And the reason you don't know that is that the court providing oversight that would ensure such was specifically avoided.
All you have is their claims about the specifics of the wiretaps.
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
It only became an issue when an ideologically driven group of reporters chose to make a program the FISA court judges themselves have repeatedly said they have no jurisdiction over, an issue. No one was filing suit. No one was complaining until the story was printed in the papers. Much like the perfectly legal bank tracking program which was also exposed for mainly ideological reasons.
Bullsh*t (Score:1, Insightful)
That's not at all clear.
Conducting war, unlike what the bushies would like you think, does not abrogate any law. That is, if it's illegal in peacetime, it's illegal in a state of war, unless congress passes a law otherwise, and it passes muster by the supreme court.
The correct thing to do for Bush is to challenge the authority in the courts, but of course, he might lose.
Personally, I think ignoring laws under the guise of "executive in time of war" is grounds for impeachment. And I'll bet I'm not the only person who feels that way.
Re:I smell... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you can read it as specifically saying that without stretching at all. It says, in part:
Papers were what they had to communicate with. Mail, diplomatic packets, notes, diaries, etc. Clearly, they were trying to safeguard communications, as well as a person's records, until or unless a warrant was issued for cause. When there is no cause, there will be no search of a person's communications. The mail isn't allowed to be interfered with either, again as a fourth amendment issue, because your papers, in transit, represent your communications and they are still protected. Your words in transit on a wire or a fiber are conceptually the same, and I mean really 1:1, exactly, precisely, 100% the same, as your letter to someone that is sitting in a postal collection box or a carrier's bag. When that letter is at your home it is protected, when it is in transit it is protected, and when it is delivered to the recipient it is protected. Your telephone communications clearly deserve the same protections, and given what the founders knew at the time, there is no question that this is what they were trying to accomplish.
Yes. It is. Because the result is the same as the human and machine (tape recorders, etc) acts forbidden in telecommunications law: Your privacy is sundered, your actions in speech that were purportedly private are not, you may very well be held accountable as a direct result of said computer monitoring, and information you did not expect to become public, or intend to become public, or want to become public, or formulate with the notion of public consumption... becomes public. How broadly varies from case to case, but regardless, your privacy is gone. Hyperbole can be interpreted as statements of intent, hypotheticals can become presumed reality, flights of fancy can be perverted into nefarious plans, statements of disgust with public figures can be taken as plots and subversion. It is critical that we know we are speaking for public (or law enforcement, even more so) consumption if that is in fact the case. There are immense consequences that arrive without justification or the knowledge of the persons communicating otherwise.
Now, mind you, I am not saying that the courts - those same courts that think the enumerated and limited power to interfere with interstate commerce means they can interfere with intrastate commerce... those same courts that think the absolute prohibition against ex post facto laws means it is perfectly OK to make ex post facto laws... those same courts that think that the requirement they not infringe upon the right to bear arms means that they can outright forbid you to bear them and that's perfectly OK... those same courts that have trampled the first amendment to the point where people are arrested for "speaking against religion" - would not go right ahead and do this.
However, to any clearheaded human being not a member of the sophist bunch coming out of law school, there is no question that regardless if it is a machine or a person that does the listening and the snitching and the character assassination, your privacy has been violated when said listening is done without the mechanism of a warrant as required by telecommunications law, which, as I mentioned earlier, is based on the fourth amendment and for perfectly obvious reasons. It is still unauthorized, still wrong, and still represents a use of power not enumerated on the one hand, and forbidden on the other.
Re:FISA is unconstitutional (Score:2, Insightful)
Kind of like people complaining about gas being $2.50 per gallon then jacking the price up to $3.50 and suddenly $3.00 seems awesome!
Re:The ACLU is Full of Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, no.
The reports are that they do this and then go after them without warrants, "traditional" or otherwise. In fact, that the very recording is through an automated system based on the connectedness. Were they securing warrants, this would be clearly within FISA. (Except that even the FISC would probably deny the warrants, since even FISA warrants still require probable cause, which such analysis would be unlikely to produce, even by a stretched definition.)
That's not true, either, it (whether it should be or not) fairly clearly is not, which is why, if the reports were generally as you describe, the system would be legally uncontroversial, though perhaps still politically controversial.
Yeah, see, the whole principle of limited government is that the citizenry, through laws dependent on the basic law, the Constitution, determine what government can and cannot do. Government may keep secrets within that legal framework, but parts of the government don't get to decide they have more power than they have been legally assigned just because they think things might work better that way. Government officers have the powers they are granted through law, not the powers they think would be convenient.
Not that, in fact, the Bush Administration has asked for forgiveness or permission.
Strange that so many reports of terrorism investigations both here and abroad even before this system became public reported terrorists doing that. I suspect that the NY Times revelation was not the first time terrorists considered the possibility that they might be being surveilled.
Re:Of course they haven't. (Score:3, Insightful)
But he can't be a diabolical mastermind and an idiot.
Re:Sure I support the troops. (Score:1, Insightful)
Next let me say that I've been there. It was after the last gulf war, not this one, but the story doesn't really change. You have people over there. People like you and me who have families and jobs. All they want to do is get up, kiss their kids goodbye, go to work and come home for a nice dinner with the family before banging the wife after the kids go to bed. They want to watch American Sitcom TV and spend the weekends at the park playing ball with their kids.
But there is a problem. People want to turn them and their families into statistics so it will make the evening news. The more horrid the stories on the news, the better. Not because it makes them look bad, but because it makes the war look bad.
Of course these families see these people all the time. They know that down the street is a house where a bunch of bomb-makers hide out. The would tell the Americans troops that they see all the time, but they are afraid of what will happen. They want these terrorist bastards gone, but they know that as soon as the Americans leave, they will be killed, only after watching their kids tortured and wife raped, of course, if they tell. They really want to turn them in, but the Americans are already talking about bailing out any day now.
Now, of course, the American troops over there know this. They know that need the support of these guys if they are going to win this thing. They know that the less support they have in Iraq, the more dangerous their jobs become. Also, they've grown to know these people and like them. They remind them of people they know at home. They trade stories about their families and the occasional joke and smoke. They feel for these people.
At the end of their patrol, they get back to the mess-hall and sit down for chow. The TV is on and loud. It has CNN Worldwide as it is one of the few channels that everyone can agree on. On CNN is a smiling journalist talking about Democrats wanting to end quagmire in Iraq. They are trying to set a deadline to start withdrawing troops in less than six months. He sees Harry Reid on the TV saying that the war in Iraq is lost and that the whole thing is failure.
Now he understands why no one is willing to give up information. While he can give his word that he is dependable and cares about these people, he can't say the same for the people back home. He knows that as soon as he leaves, the people that have helped him out, the people that have told him what he needs to know, the kids who he gave candy to, are all going to die shortly after he leaves, and there is not a damn thing he can do about it.
Now, is there any wonder why our soldiers think that Democrats are heartless pieces of shit who don't give a damn about anyone beyond our own borders? I guess if they are not American families they don't matter. (Would it make the statement any different to replace the word "American" with "white"?) Yeah, Iraq is not a happy place. It must suck to know that no matter how hard you try, you have politicians who will fight harder for their own reelection than they will for lives of the people you've grown to know here.
Of course, you can say Bush lied or it's a war for oil or whatever bumper sticker logic you want to throw at it. Still, it doesn't change the facts on the ground over there. It no longer matters why we went to war. The fact right now, today, this second is that we are there. Now we have to decide if we want to take the easy way out, or the right way.
Of course, the quickest way to end a war is to lose it (also Orwell)
Re:FISA is unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
FISA (presently) allows wiretapping first, with up to 48 hours before a warrant has to be applied for. This is ass-backwards. Warrant first, then security violation. That is what the bill of rights allows for. Not the other way around. So the sentence you were concerned with was, and is, 100% correct. FISA is absolutely unconstitutional.
That is bad enough — but they are actually threatening to make it worse.
The Department of Justice's proposed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments [aclu.org], section 405, extends the duration of emergency wiretap orders that allow the government to surveil suspects without prior judicial review from 72 hours to one week. Section 410 extends the period of emergency trap and trace orders from 48 hours to one week. The initial position of 48 hours is already completely out of line; broadening it to one week just adds insult (to the constitution and the people) to injury (to the constitution and the people.)
Section 409 of the proposed changes allows the attorney general more leeway to authorize physical searches in the absence of a warrant. It expands the period of time the attorney general has to search a home without judicial approval from three days to a full week. Nice, eh? Search first, warrant later. Un-bloody-constitutional. Period. But wait! There's more! Section 409 allows the attorney general to share information obtained in warrantless searches of your home even when the court later finds that the search was wrongly conducted. How do you like those bananas, folks? Yessir, your government at work, destroying key elements of the bill of rights, and using your tax dollars to do so.
And this is also 100% unconstitutional. If (and that is a huge if) such capabilities need be given the constitution can be changed. If our society feels that such changes are worth more than the problems they cause, they will survive as amendments. Otherwise, as now, there is no authority to do any such thing — only power. And I maintain that a serious problem with most US citizens is that they confuse authority with power. The government has very little of the former, and has absconded with far too much of the latter.
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry. I reserve my respect for people who don't compromise their ethics and then try to shore up public support by draping a flag over their shoulders in the name of nationalism. Support the troops!
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
In the view of some opportunists there is - there's the one that grants divine right to rule as granted by God on coronation which is really what he wants and is getting due to no opposition that can stop him. The British threw that out with Magna Carta, but unfortunatly the shift back to monarchy by a branch of the Republicans no less has reintroduced that rule that trumps any "goddam peice of paper". The only way to stop this slide back to a barbarian monarchy is to make sure that it is clear that the law applies to everyone. At least he would not risk a party room revolt by going beyond the term limit (Putin will get away with that but Bush cannot due to it being a long standing tradition in the USA), but something should be done so the next elected President does not act like an elected King.
Things can actually get really grim - some idiot could push hard for a cold war with China in time for the Presidential election and then you'll really see the state get authoritarian.
Re:Only in a divided government, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
It seemed to work to me. Iraq did not hijack any airplanes. Iraq didn't train or help in any way the highjackers. Iraq basically did not have WMDs. Seems like peace was working pretty well.
Yes i know, Saddam was a real asshole, a murderer even. Well if we are going to go around invading countries to control their domestic policy there are a lot of places we should be going. Lets invade Thailand so we can stop child prostitution. Lets invade Brazil so we can round up the drug dealers. Lets invade fucking the United Kingdom because they are more of a surveillance society than us. Look, we can't go around invading countries just because we don't like how it is being run. If that is our policy we should have invaded Saudi Arabia but we all know why that wont ever happen.
What Saddam did in his own country is completely wrong but Iraq did not claim to be a democracy. Saddam ordered the execution of people for resisting him. He murdered those people but American law doesn't apply there. We should take human rights violations seriously but Iraq is not the best place to start.
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad none of them are generals. Or attorney generals.
This is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
Creating a bill like this implies that the current practices are legal, and that this law changes that. In the minds of the players, the law actually weakens exactly what they are trying to protect.
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:1, Insightful)
The whole war is illegal as far as I am concerned, so every single person there has no moral justification whatsoever.
OTOH, every Iraq parson who fights against the occupying forces (instead of each other) gets my highest respect. They are outpowered by high tech equipment and ruthless spray-n-pray "soldiers".
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, there are cases right now which allege that the order to deploy was illegal, and I support inqueries on this matter even though neither the civil nor military courts are in a position to answer this question. The civil courts are not designed to answer things pertaining to political questions, and the military questions are not allowed to question public policy (and for good reason). For those who felt that their conscience meant disobeying the order to deploy on these grounds, I support them.
However, unless one feels that the order falls into a specific set of categories, I think that a soldier has a duty to obey them.
I do not feel that "support our troops" means "support our war" and I certainly do not think "support our troops" means "vote Republican and support our President." We as the civilians in a democractic Republic have an obligation to discuss and question these things. And as a country, we have an obligation to speek our mind regarding the war, the job of the President, and the like.
But we should never forget nor cease to appreciate what some people do for a love and sense of duty. Questioning the war is not questioning their duty. Questioning the President is not questioning their duty. And supporting our troops as they go through hell out of nothing more than an attempt to uphold their oaths to follow lawful orders does not diminish criticism of the war.
Re:Sure I support the troops. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're saying that Bush, on a hunch, decided to spend hundreds of billions of our dollars and get tens of thousands of people killed. I would not want a president to be that stupid, and I sincerely hope you don't either.
If I were a Bush apologist, I would rather be arguing that it's okay for Bush to lie because he's the big boss. (This is the view of most conservatives.) You're taking the angle that Bush is an idiot who does whatever Putin and Chalabi say without thinking. What does that say about his skills as a leader?
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:4, Insightful)
What people tend to forget is that problems such as the abuse of prisoners only came to light because they WERE the anomaly.
I am not so sure. If it was one person in Abu Ghraib, I would agree, but when more are involved you have to ask what exactly lead to this and how systemic they are. My own suspicion is that these problems are caused not by just a few trouble makers but rather by a dispersed group of people (still a small minority) who believe that what they watch on '24' makes for good interrogation practices because they identify with the character of Jack Bower. This qualifies to me as systemic but is not a matter of the chain of command.
However, this does not really matter. The real issue is: soldiers have an obligation to uphold the laws of war. THis is even in the oath our military men and women take to faithfully execute all lawful orders. We do train our soldiers to handle these situations, and to uphold such laws. Those who fail in this regard do not deserve our respect or support. However, as the title of my post indicates, I think that they are a minority.
The reason that they tend to forget this is because our domestic enemies, aka the left, work very hard to create the false impression that our military is in the business of abusing people.
To confuse dissent with treason is to undermine the very liberties we hold dear.
In a Free Nation, I do not believe anyone, by expressing any political idea, can ever be a domestic enemy on the basis of that expression. That even includes those demogogues, like Coulter, who seem intent on destroying the very basis for our free society. For if our nation does not have the choice to give up that very freedom that defines us, can we really be truly free?
Look, at the point where we start to confuse dissent with treason, we are in serious danger of losing the very liberties which have defined our great republic. However, the proper response to people who suggest that those who differ politically are somehow to be defined as domestic enemies is to respond with rational, thought-provoking, well-framed arguments.
During the last war that was an overseas extension of our ongoing war with our domestic enemies, aka the Vietnam war, the left painted our soldiers as "baby killers," a characterization of the military that is still prevalent among the leftists of that generation to this day.
I have talked with at least one Vietnam Vet who did shoot and kill a child in self-defense. This is not a war crime, though the VC committed one when they had this kid throw grenades at our army.
If other soldiers committed war crimes by indiscriminatly killing civilians within target areas, then those soldiers and those soldiers specifically can and should be excluded from our support. However, my point is that even so, the actions of such criminals should not be used to withold support from those who faithfully executed lawful orders out of a sense of duty.
I once knew a girl whose mother "disowned" her when she joined the army after high school. The rationale was that the military was made up of nothing bu "baby killers." I was only 18 at the time, and while I knew her mother was mad, I didn't realize that her insanity was the result of leftist indoctrination. I was too young to realize that large groups of people can be hopelessly and completely full of shit. Impervious to logic, resistant to experience, and all but immune to encounters with the clue-bat. Some forms of insanity are communicable. Some do eventually come to their senses and join the rest of us in the real world, but sadly for many it is a life-long ailment.
I come from a Quaker family. Quakers have forbid members from serving in the armed forces since well before the American Revolution. There are other religious groups too with a long history of conscientious objection (Mennonites, Hudderites, and a few others). Under current statutory and con
Re:I support most of them at least. (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole war is illegal as far as I am concerned, so every single person there has no moral justification whatsoever.
OTOH, every Iraq parson who fights against the occupying forces (instead of each other) gets my highest respect. They are outpowered by high tech equipment and ruthless spray-n-pray "soldiers".
Secondly, whatever you think of the war, it is important to note that even those who did have the best information available were clearly divided as to whether the war was necessary. The necessity of war was one of a number of legitimate disagreements. ANd while I have always opposed the war, I accept that people who are as well informed and well intentioned as I have supported it.
Third, I do think that we need to be careful about an exit strategy. We have no centralized opposition, and there is a good chance that, despite the fact that our presence is destabilizing the region, a badly executed retreat will be worse. While Bush has made some steps (anti-debaathification, etc) thee are probably too little too late. We really need something more comprehensive and stronger.
1) Conditional security guarantees for Iran and Syria. We should articulate that we are willing to give security guarantees to these countries provided that (in Iran's case) certains steps are taken to prevent them from developing nuclear weaponds, and provided that they (in both their cases) do not continue to support any organization which attacks targets inside the 1949 armistice lines that define the closest thing Israel has to a border.
I think our position re: Hizbullah should be:
We do not care about attacks against IDF targets in Golan. We do not care about IDF targets in the West Bank. We do not care about attacks against settlements. We do not care about attacks against IDF forces in Gaza. However, once the Green Line is crossed that is another matter. If IDF forces decide to take advantage of this and shell parts of Lebanon from inside the Green Line, the Lebanese Army (and not Hizbullah) has the right to respond.
Rationale: As long as Iran or Syria feels threatened and vulnerable, it is in their interest to keep Iraq unstable so that our forces cannot launch a committed war against them. It is in everyone's best interest for a clear position to be articulated, and this may provide some leverage against Hizbullah if executed well.
2) We need to communicate clearly that our forces are non-political and will only stay as long as we are asked to by the Iraqi government. However, if we are to stay, the Iraqi government must agree that government officials cannot be involved in other militias. Not the Badr Brigades, not the Madhi Army, etc. The government must allow such organizations to be forceably disarmed or even outright attacked if necessary. And all Iraqi police and military units must be multi-ethnic.
Rationale: Currently the Iraqi Civil War is such that one side is hiding behind our troops while committing atrocities. We can't let that continue to happen.
Re:Sure I support the troops. (Score:4, Insightful)
That is exceptionally fallacious logic.
Our armed forces exist for one purpose and one purpose only: DEFENSE. Not policing other countries. Not invading other countries. Not preventing other countries from falling apart. DEFENSE.
The fact that we are draining OUR resources in order to CONTINUE using the same flawed logic is plain wrong. You don't fix a fuck-up by continuing fucking up.
This administration fucked up. They fucked-up bad. I don't see any logical reason to continue punishing our armed forces (and our children) for the idiocy of this administration. Iraq needs to take care of Iraq.
"Of course, the quickest way to end a war is to lose it (also Orwell)"
The quickest way to end a war is to not have one in the first place.
We won the war militarily. We lost the war ideoligically. Which means we lost. The people are figthing against us. The religious extremeists are fighting against us. They don't want us there. All we are doing is acting as a lightning rod.
~X~