Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Democrats endorse wiretapping.

Blogs For Bush has this:

Tom Daschle, Jane Harman: Don't Stop Wiretap Program.

Well, what do you know? Democrats do indeed pay attention to polls.

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, along with the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, said emphatically yesterday that President Bush should continue his controversial terrorist wiretapping program.

As Senator Bayh (D - IN ) just said, If the people of America don't trust us with their lives, they aren't likely to trust us with anything else.

Watch for more and more Democrats to endorse protecting this country from terrorist, as we get closer to Election Day.

Update: The American Daily has this:

General Hayden, principle deputy director of national intelligence and former director of the NSA, spoke to the National Press Club on Jan. 23rd and "admits that we knew that Mohamed Atta and his crew were in the US. But he says that “we did not know anything more” because prior to 9/11 “Mohamed Atta and his fellow 18 hijackers would have been presumed to have been protected persons, U.S. persons, by NSA."

It goes on:

When FISA was created there were no cell phones, no internet, no personal computers, etc. Hayden said “I don't think that anyone can make the claim that the FISA statute is optimized to deal with or prevent a 9/11 or to deal with a lethal enemy who likely already had combatants inside the United States.

Once again, we are faced with a pre-9/11 system for a post 9/11 world and to better illustrate that point, Hayden used a revealing example.

“I testified in open session to the House Intel Committee in April of the year 2000. At the time, I created some looks of disbelief when I said that if Osama bin Laden crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York, there were provisions of U.S. law that would kick in, offer him protections and affect how NSA could now cover him.

”In other words, the U.S.A.’s biggest enemy would be, in essence, invisible to our security agencies if he were to get inside the country. I don’t know about you, but using our Constitution to protect our enemies at the expense of our own citizen’s life and limb is absurd. But it is an absurdity that the left wants to wallow in.

As to the new authority that Bush did require of the NSA after 9/11 Hayden assured us that the NSA reviewed all that was asked of them by the Bush administration, not just in terms of possibility, but also in legal terms. “… our lawyers weren't careful out of fear; they were careful out of a heartfelt, principled view that NSA operations had to e consistent with bedrock legal protections”, Hayden said.

Read the whole thing. It really details how the MSM totally got it wrong in reporting the NSA program and how Democrats are being less than honest in their assessment of it. via The Anchoress