I find it simply amazing how Nancy Pelosi knew about water boarding, knew nothing about water boarding, knew about it but thought they wouldn’t use it, knew about it once they had used it and was simply lied to by the CIA all along. Now it is apparently her belief that the CIA lied to her the entire time and continuously lies to Congress on a regular basis. Isn’t that nice? Slam the CIA just to cover your own incompetent ass.

In the absolute height of arrogance, this woman is demanding investigations and possible criminal charges for those who acted in good faith on information that they thought was lawful and appropriate. She wants to retroactively target CIA operatives, advisors and administration officials for actions taken that were lawful at the time they were carried out, regardless of their legal status now.

Now we see the treachery and deception present on the left. This woman knew full well about all of these procedures and interrogation techniques and signed off on them. She knew before anyone was ever water boarded that it was a technique that had been approved by the CIA and would be employed in the most severe cases. She knew after it happened and never raised any alarm until it was politically profitable for her to do so. This is not about torture. This is not about interrogations. This is about political capital and maneuvering. This is about revenge against the Bush administration and retribution against political opponents. This is petty, corrupt, unethical, deceitful and dishonest. Where is the outrage from the left? Where are the objections to her knowing this was occurring but staying silent until it politically benefited her not to?

She needs to go. Not because she supported the water boarding of vicious, murderous bastards bent on the destruction of as many innocent Americans as possible. Hell, she should be commended for that. No, she needs to go for lying through her teeth and attempting to have dedicated professionals who simply did their jobs brought up on charges for doing the very things she knew there were going to do to keep this country safe.

Seriously, let us remember who we are dealing with here.

There has been an awful lot of discussion surrounding the torture subject again since the Obama administration has floated the idea of criminal investigations into the harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA to extract information from al-Qaida operatives. The Obama administration has received both harsh criticism and demands for further investigation after the releasing the CIA memos detailing the interrogation methods used by the CIA and the decision making process surrounding them. I believe this is a reckless step aimed at political gain and poses a great risk to our nation on many fronts.

To begin this discussion, one must first decide what exactly torture is and what remains a harsh interrogation method that does not cross this line. This is a question over which much debate has raged throughout the last few years. While some clearly see water boarding as torture, others disagree and find the practice perfectly acceptable when used in high level, critical interrogations where other methods have failed. Many would also argue that these interrogation methods are ineffective and do not produce reliable results. However, it appears that the evidence in hand on that point tends to demonstrate otherwise.

This is a difficult question to answer, as Americans have always fought against regimes that torture and abuse people. Therefore to even consider such measures must place great strain on our core beliefs. Herein lies a question faced by many of our great leaders in the past, to what lengths can we go to protect this nation without destroying what this nation stands for? When President Lincoln was faced with the dissolution of the Union, he suspended the basic rights guaranteed under by Constitution under the Bill of Rights and marched a standing army against American citizens to preserve that Union. When President Truman faced the decision to invade Japan at the cost of millions upon millions of American and Japanese lives, or to drop tremendously devastating weapons of mass destruction on civilian population centers in an attempt to force a Japanese surrender, he chose the lesser of two evils and the lower cost of life. When President Bush was faced with another impending terrorist attack on this nation, he authorized what methods he thought legal and justified to extract the information from our enemies that allowed us to prevent these attacks. For none of these men were these decisions light, but they were easy ones to make. They did what they must to protect this nation in dire times of need. They chose the only path they could to save this nation or the lives of her citizens.

For me this question is simple. I for one do not consider water boarding to be torture, nor do I consider many of the other methods detailed in the memos that were foolishly released by the Obama administration to be above the uncrossable line. When dealing with a ruthless enemy who will slowly cut the head off of an innocent American contractor while filming it for propaganda purposes, I find it perfectly acceptable that we would pour water over his head until he decides to talk. When dealing with a people who believe it acceptable to murder their own children in ‘honor killings’ because they have not behaved in some particular way, I find no problem sticking them in a room with an insects that they fear. When dealing with a people that strap bombs on to women and children, teach that it is acceptable to beat your wives and kill indiscriminately innocent people who will not yield to their way of life, I do not see a problem with slamming them up against a wall and threatening to beat the information out of them.

Someone asked me a very simple question one day in an attempt to define what I saw as torture. If your children had been kidnapped and the man sitting before you had the information that would save their lives, to what lengths would you go to obtain that information? Where ever you chose to stop or whatever you decided you could not do, was your definition of torture. After contemplating the question for some time, I realized that it is not that difficult of a question for me to answer. This may make me a horrible person in some people’s eyes, but I could think of very little that I would not do to save the life of just one of my children, not mention all of them. If the person still possessed the ability to draw breath once they gave me what I needed, they should consider themselves very fortunate indeed. I would gladly water board him and his entire family to save my children and I would sleep well at night knowing I had done so. I would stop at nothing to protect my children. How could I think less of a nation that did likewise to protect her citizens?

Someone once argued with me that I would be sacrificing my morality by taking such actions, even in the defense of my children. I disagree. I feel that it would be a moral imperative to do anything and everything possible to save my children. Failing to do so would be the ultimate moral failure. These people have sworn to kill as many innocent Americans as the possibly can by any means that they can. We are at war with an enemy that knows no rules and respects no boundaries. Our citizens and soldiers are offered no quarter and are brutally murdered and hung in public as examples of their barbarism. How there are people in this country who have a problem with pouring water on these people to scare them into releasing information that will thwart their horrific plans is far beyond me. Failing to do so, to me, seems the ultimate failure of a nation and its moral obligation to protect its people.

In the short month since President Obama has been inaugurated he has made good on his promise to deliver change to this nation. We have seen a massive increase in Federal spending from the pork laden $820 billion stimulus package to the Omnibus appropriations bill filled with over 8,500 earmark projects. Earlier this week the President hosted a fiscal responsibility convention where political leaders from across this nation gathered to discuss our soaring deficit and struggling economy. At the conclusion of this summit, President Barack Obama stood before the nation and simply lied to our faces. He promised that the Federal government would operate on a pay-as-you-go program and ensured us that he would not spend any money that we did not actually have. He promised to cut non-essential programs in favor of those critical to the success of this nation, not raise taxes on any families making less than $250,000 annually and ensure that Washington did not leave a massive debt that would crush our future generations. Apparently, it was all a lie.Yesterday, Obama released his new fiscal budget to Congress totaling nearly $3.5 trillion dollars in a direct contradiction to his words just days earlier. Considering the $700 billion dollars already allocated to financial bailouts, the $820 billion dollars in the federal stimulus package, the $420 billion dollars in the Omnibus appropriations bill and not the $3.5 trillion dollars in the new Federal budget, within his first month in office, President Barack Obama has spent over $5.4 trillion dollars with promises of more to come. Our nation and our economy will be crushed under this massive debt. This is more money that any country has ever spent in such a short time in the history of this planet. This is the change we were looking for?

To show a fine example of more undesirable change, allow me to explain the new decision handed down by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Since 1991 it has not been permissible for the media to photograph fallen soldiers returning home from a war zone. President George H.W. Bush prohibited this practice in 1991 during Desert Storm as a means of protecting those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation from being politicized in the media. Acknowledging the dishonor that this nation did unto its servicemen in past wars by using them and their sacrifice as political tools to seed dissent, President Bush (41) decided that he would no longer allow the media to photograph fallen soldiers returning to military bases in this nation. Yesterday, Secretary Gates decided that the media’s desire to plaster images of dead soldiers on television, websites and periodicals across this nation in an attempt to discredit this war should be allowed. I will give him the credit for providing the stipulation that the families must give permission for this to occur, but I can just imagine what will come of this. The first time a media outlet convinces a family to allow them to photograph their fallen loved one so that they might honor their service and sacrifice and then turns around an politicizes the soldiers death as a means to further a political agenda, Gates’ resignation should be demanded.

The media claims that Americans have been sheltered from the real cost of war by not allowing them to photograph our returning dead. Bullshit. We know the cost of war. We know the sacrifice made by those that the media dismisses as murderers before a fair trial. We know the price paid by the returning dead and wounded. I know personally. I have a dear friend who fought willingly for his country and fell in battle to a sniper round. Luckily the brilliance of military surgeons saved his life in Baghdad, but he will never be the same. The round stuck him in one temple and exited the other doing serious brain damage along the way. By the skill of those surgeons and the grace of God he managed to live, but his life is forever changed due to his injury. We know the cost.

If the media were not completely biased and had shown willingness to report fairly about this conflict, this might be a different story. All we ever hear from Iraq and Afghanistan is negative. None of the good is ever reported. I still have friends serving there. I hear from them how the children run to them when they see them on the street and how civilians invite them into their homes to thank them for what they have done for their country. We hear of Marines who killed innocent civilians, but we do not hear of the ones that placed themselves in extraordinary danger to avoid civilian casualties. We hear of soldiers who violated their rules of engagement, but never of those who lost their lives because those rules so restricted them from defending themselves as they needed to.

I have another friend, a Marine. This is a good man, good father and fiercely dedicated soldier. He flies an F/A-18 Hornet for the Corps and I personally know he has taken innocent lives in this conflict. Were the incident left unto the media, my friend would be labeled as a murderer, a horrible example of American aggression, but he is so far from that it is not the least bit humorous. What was his crime? What drove him to kill several innocent civilians? The answer is very simple: bad intelligence. What he thought was a legitimate, approved target containing high level al-Qaeda leaders, was not. Was it his fault that the wrong vehicles were in the wrong place and the wrong time? Was it the analyst fault or the soldiers that collected the intelligence that they were sure was solid? Was it the commander’s fault who issued the strike order? Was it the fault of the ground crews that loaded his weapons or the tanker crew that topped him off on his ingress to his target? No. None of them deserve the blame as this was not an intentional attack on civilians. This was an unfortunate mistake; something that happens quite often in war. This does not make my friend or anyone else involved some horrible person who disregarded human life. It makes them all soldiers doing the best to serve their country with honor and integrity. Things such as these unfortunately occur in war, but left to the wiles of the media my friend, this good faithful soldier, would have been made out to be a murder instead of the hero that he is. They would not have cared about all the close air support missions he flew covering other soldiers and Marines that were pinned down. They would not have cared that at times he took out targets using only the cannon on his fighter to avoid collateral damage when he carried a full payload of much more destructive weapons that would have kept him out of harm’s way. They would not have cared that this incident tore him up emotionally; leaving him unable to fly combat missions for weeks until he stopped blaming himself for those innocent deaths and realized that it was part of war. They would not have cared that this strong, seasoned jarhead called his wife crying the day that it happened and was unable to even tell her why. To the media, he would just be a murder. We know the cost of war and we know where the intent of the media lies.

Now these people have the ability to photograph our fallen dead as they are returned in honor to an ungrateful nation and a mourning family. This is the change we can believe in? Well, this is the change that we got.

It appears that the world is on the brink of going insane this week. The madness is wide spread and disturbing to behold. Let us take a look at some of the more bizarre occurrences of the week.

We have Englanistan declaring that Sharia shall be used to judge Muslims living in England completely setting aside the English legal system and creating a separate form of religious based justice for a minority populace. This flies in the face of the very systems of laws that our own nation is based on, English common law, and is diametrically opposed to the concepts of a freedom, justice and equality. After expelling students a few days earlier for refusing to face Mecca, kneel and pray during a class exploration of the Muslim religion, England now has adopted a system of laws that treats women as property, encourages husbands to beat their wives, calls for the execution of infidels, supports fatwas on those who disagree and would see the arm of a starving child cut off for stealing food. It saddens me to see such a staunch ally slowly deteriorating into a society paralyzed by political correctness and the fear of offending anyone that they fail to uphold equality under the law for their citizenry.

Here in the states we still have Democrat Senators and Representatives clamoring for governmental seizure and control of the oil and gas industry in a move straight out of The Communist Manifesto. The seizure and nationalization of private industry is a basic tenet of Communism and in earlier days could have warranted a trial for treason and a swift public execution. This is a blatant grab for power by an already bloated and wasteful government and the kind of move that triggers revolutions. This is a very, very dangerous road that we are poised to go down. It could signal the end of freedom and liberty for many industries and even individuals and start something dangerous that this country is far from ready for.

Iran has announced the commencement of military exercises and has included in this announcement a warning to the United States and Israel to stay out of their way. This, just days after their seeming willingness to discuss their nuclear program, throws a damper on any hopes of Iran coming to its sense and joining the grown ups at the big table.

Now Russia is making noise and threatening ‘appropriate actions’ if the United States erects a missile defense system in the Czech Republic to defend Europe against rogue states armed with tactical or ballistic missile systems. Not willing to clarify exactly what ‘appropriate measures’ would include, Russia simply warned against the ratification of the treaty and the construction of the radar and missile emplacements. It seems that Russia desires a permanent presence on the base where the defense system is to be constructed. The problem with this is that the permanent presence of the Russians is still far too fresh on the minds of most Czechs as it is and they do not desire any such permanence to ever return. The Czechs want the base and not the Russians to go along with it. That seems to be a problem for the Russians, but not so much for the United States which appears to be proceeding with the agreement to build the base. We will have to wait and see what ‘appropriate actions’ the Russians deem necessary.

What a crazy week, and it is only Tuesday.

Thanks to Scrappleface for shedding such light on these issues:

(2007-12-11) — When the director of Central Intelligence appears today before a closed-door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee to explain the destruction of recordings of CIA terrorist interrogations including the controversial technique of waterboarding, he plans to present the panel with several “alternate tapes” that have been preserved, which he said “unquestionably show episodes of torture.”

[More..]

Read the entire article at ScrappleFace CIA Chief Offers Torture Tapes to Senate Panel

Last week news broke of the internally released CIA document detailing the destruction of two video tapes covering the interrogations of al Qaeda members. The tapes were apparently made in 2002 and then subsequently destroyed in 2005 to protect the identities of the interrogators, the methods of interrogation and because they possessed no further intelligence value according to the CIA.

Today, we are once again witnessing the endless calls for investigation of the CIA, just as we have seen with the Plame case and former Attorney General Gonzales. In both cases, no crimes actually occurred, but our government wasted valuable time and billions of dollars in useless investigations of non-existent crimes. Are we again to be subjected to this?

CIA Director Michael Hayden has already responded to the inquiries by stating that the tape were destroyed to protect the interrogators so no one could retaliate against then and the methods so that our enemies cannot train to resist them. He has also stated that the tapes held no additional intelligence value and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was informed of their destruction before it was carried out.

Already Democrats are screaming about obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, which actually could only apply if these tapes were involved in an ongoing criminal investigation. They are accusing the CIA of attempting to cover up the use of water boarding as an interrogation technique. This accusation does not make sense at all since one of the individuals on the tape is alleged to be Abu Zubayda whom the CIA fully admits was water boarded to gain information after weeks of being completely uncooperative. Therefore the argument that they are covering up a method of interrogation that they have openly admitted to using on the specific subject on the tape seems irrelevant at best. (NOTE: Abu Zudayda lasted 35 seconds under water boarding after holding out under traditional methods of interrogation for weeks on end. The answers he provided led to many key moves against al Qaeda including the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of 9/11.)

There are really three questions that should be asked here:

1. Were the destroyed tapes part of any current or ongoing criminal proceedings?

There are currently no legal proceedings on which these investigations bear any relevance. However, if it is found that at the time of their destruction there were criminal proceedings which these tapes related to directly, then there may be cause for further investigation.

2. Is it official policy of the CIA to destroy information which may expose agents, methods or operations in order to protect such assets?

If this is outside of the official CIA procedures for handling sensitive information that could possibly expose assets and place them at risk, then perhaps we should take a closer look. However, if the CIA has a practice of destroying information that could potentially put its assets at risk, then there is nothing to investigate in the destruction of these tapes.

3. Were the proper people informed of the tapes and their eventual destruction?

According to the CIA the Senate Intelligence Committee was aware of methods of interrogation to be used before the interrogations occurred. Apparently some members of Congress were concerned that the methods would not be harsh enough to extract information, but the all approved of the methods used. They were also aware of the tapes as early as 2002. The CIA has also indicated that it informed select members of Congress in 2003 of their eventual intent to destroy the tapes to protect the agents and the methods. Congressional members immediately denied this, even though in 2003 Representative Jane Harman (D-Ca) issues a letter to the CIA expressing her concern over the planned destruction of the tapes. This would tend to indicated that the CIA did in fact notify Congress as early as 2003 of their eventual intent to destroy the tapes to protect their assets, just as they have claimed. If this is actually the case, then no crime has been committed and we should allow the intelligence agencies of this nation to continue to do their jobs.

Iran has been in the news quite a bit over the past few days. In the recently released key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) it has come to light that Iran may have ended its nuclear weapons program almost four years ago at some point in 2003. Reaction to this news from the left has been swift and predictable. Claims of another failed Bush policy and accusations warmongering against Iran surfaced while toner was still cooling on the NIE report itself.

Immediately we see leading Democrats commenting on more failures in the intelligence agencies and assaults on Bush’s demands that Iran comply with international pressure regarding the transparency of the nuclear program. President Bush commented on this report yesterday by acknowledging the report, but reminding the American public that this still does not change the fact that Iran is dangerous. He insisted that Iran come clean and what they had done and exactly what they are currently doing to the world.

The report does not indicate that Iran has stopped enriching uranium, the process which can yield weapons grade material. By Iran’s own claims their enrichment program has continued and even increased within the past few years against international demands for them to cease this activity.

What I find astonishing is the reaction to this report and its immediate acceptance as an absolute correct and incontrovertible fact by those who see it as advantageous to their own political aspirations. If this report is accurate, it means that all of our intelligence sources for the past five years have been horribly inaccurate. All of the estimates of their continuing development were apparently wrong, so how are we to be so sure that this one is right. How convenient it is for the Democratic leadership to be able to completely dismiss the last five years of intelligence that has shown Iran to be concentrating heavily on development and enrichment of uranium. Now we have one report out of many that says Iran has ceased it weapons programs and they accept this without hesitation as if God Himself had declared it so.

My concern is this: What if this is the inaccurate intelligence estimate? If we accept this NIE as fact and allow it to direct our policy with Iran it will place us in a most difficult position. No more political pressure can be applied against Iran to comply with international demands. Military options will become extremely difficult if our official position is that no nuclear weapons programs still exist in Iran. This could severely limit our diplomatic and military options available to apply pressure on Iran and give Ahmadinejad a free hand to pursue whatever avenues of development he desires.

If this is a valid estimate of their weapons program then I will be the first one to thank God that they have come to their senses. Assuming that this is an accurate account another question then begs to be answered: Why did they stop it? There are a few critical events that happened in 2003, but one of the most obvious was what drove Moammar Kadafi to surrender his weapons of mass destruction and abandon their future development. In 2003, after multiple warnings for Iraq to cooperate with international weapons inspectors and Saddam Hussein’s absolute refusal to do so, the American military quickly and decisively removed that totalitarian regime from power. If this is true, it may mean that Iran saw the lights go out next door and decided that the cost of perusing was just too great.

Whether or not this is an accurate estimate or not, what is disturbing about this entire situation is the radical reactions by the left. The Democrats have even gone so far as to suggest that President Bush has known this information the entire time but just used it to paint the perfect anti-Iran sentiment. Regardless, while Democrats are laughing and cheering what they see as a defeat for Bush, they are once again failing to recognize that our enemies are cheering right along with them.

Once again today Attorney General Roberto Gonzales came under fire from the Senate Judiciary Committee over his involvement with the firing of nine of the ninety-three U.S. Attorneys. Once again the Senators chose to openly defecate on the constitutional powers granted to the executive branch and inject its nose into places where it does not belong.

The entire issue is about something that was absolutely legal and well within the President’s right to do, if he so chose. The senate assailed Gonzales with claims that the White House had directed termination of those Attorneys due to different political philosophies. The problem with this is that it is absolutely irrelevant what the reasons that the President of the United States had for dismissing the Attorneys. United States Attorneys serve at the privilege of the President and can be dismissed and appointed at any time and for any reason. The contention here is that the Justice Department is claiming job performance issues and the Senate has flat out refused to accept their explanation. Job performance is such a broad category that it could easily include not prosecuting cases in accordance with or not ascribing to a certain political philosophy. It is still irrelevant.

The President of the Unites States has the sole right to appoint U.S. Attorneys and dismiss them. There are no criteria or qualifications for the appointing or dismissal of these positions spelled out anywhere other than the President’s right to do so. There is no crime. There is no scandal. There is nothing but a Senate fishing expedition and an attempt to get an administration official under oath and play gotcha games.

The hypocrisy of this Senate is astounding. No one questioned Clinton when he dismissed and replaces ALL 93 U.S. Attorneys for purely political reasons when he entered office, nor has any other President ever been challenged over the political appointment of political appointees for purely political reasons. That is the entire point of the executive privilege to do so.

Now the Senate is threatening to appoint a Special Prosecutor to once again investigate a crime that did not occur. We all remember what happened last time that happened, an innocent man was convicted, fined and almost went to jail, save the intervention of the President, all over a fictional crime that never took place.

Top this off with idiotic calls by Democratic Senator Russ Fiengold for the Congress to censure the President over multiple issues including the Iraq war, executive privilege, NSA surveillance, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. Only once in the history of this country has a corrupt Congress even attempted a censure of the President of the United States. In 1834 an embattled Andrew Jackson was censured for his citing of executive privilege and refusal to release documentation to the Congress. Jackson shot back whit a letter rejecting the censure and Congress refused to enter the letter into the records of Congress. Three years later in a sharp departure from the Whig party, the country returned to Democrat control and the stain of the censure of a sitting President was expunged from the Congressional record. While a censure has no teeth and no basis in Constitutional law or in the rules of the House or Senate, it is a serious condemnation of actions taken by a public official.

Instead of our elected officials wasting their time and our money on foolish investigations of non-existent crimes and censures of political enemies, would it not serve the American people better if they would do their damn jobs? Secure our fraking borders and deal with the millions of illegal aliens we have in this country. How about that? Do your fraking jobs for a change and let the rest of our government work as it should. Let the President appoint his political appointees. Let the Generals conduct the war. It is simple, do your job as prescribed to you by the Constitution of the United States, let others do theirs.

As the House of Representatives debates the worthless measure of a non-binding resolution against the mission that our soldiers are trying to accomplish, we learn that the Senate will do the same disgraceful thing tomorrow. I have earlier posted my feeling on the treachery behind a resolution that makes the feeble attempt at claiming to support the troops but not their mission, so I will not go into great detail on that again.

The one thing I will note is that the tightened security, the lifting of the strict rules of engagement and the troops already beginning to deploy to Iraq seem to be making a huge difference already. According to reports from Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered that the leaders of his Mahdi Army to flee Iraq and informed the Iraq government that “eager for the stability of the state and the success of the security plan”, according to Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani. There were also reports of stepped up US and Iraqi operations meeting little or no resistance in their efforts to secure Baghdad over the past few days. What I say at this point is fine, go ahead and vote against our President, his commitment, our service men and their mission. Go on record as having opposed this troop surge and the reinforcement of our forces. When this succeeds in reducing the level of violence in Baghdad and allows the Iraqi government to get a firm grip on the security of their country, we will remember this vote.

In recognition of the symbolism of this resolution and the apparent will of Hillary Clinton to make it her mission to be the next President of the United States of America, I would hereby like to announce my full support for her. That is correct I support Hillary Clinton, one hundred percent. I simply do not support her mission or what she is trying to accomplish.

See how stupid that sounds? No think how that must sound to our soldiers?

I have been watching the events running up to the fall elections with great concern. The Democratic party is poised to take control of some key House and Senate positions and I am hoping that the Republican party can front a wining strategy to avoid this at all costs. We have seen recent evidence as to why having a Democrat controlled House or Senate would be disastrous for this country. I will attempt to show you what scares me the most out of this prospect while I make a serious attempt to avoid the rhetoric.

The Patriot Act:
While probably not perfect in all aspects, the Patriot Act has been one of the most influential tools in combating terrorist domestically since its inception shortly after 9/11. The Democrats did everything possible to defeat this bill, including a filibuster on the Senate floor.

“We killed the Patriot Act,” boasted Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, to cheers from a crowd at a political rally after the vote. - Patriot Act extension filibustered, by Charles Hurt, The Washington Times, December 17, 2005.

NSA Monitoring Programs:
Key Democrats have directed the party into fighting against many efforts of the National Security Agency even when those actions have been legal and the Senate Intelligence Committee had been fully briefed, including both the data mining efforts and the foreign intercepts. There have been calls for investigations into classified operations for intelligence gathering that would severely hamper the ability for our military to gather information.

Last night, I filed an amicus brief with 71 other Democratic Members of Congress in two cases challenging the Bush Administration’s illegal warrantless domestic spying.

It is very disturbing that, on the same day we learn that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, we also learn that the Department of Justice has abruptly cancelled its investigation into the Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. These developments clearly point to the urgent need for oversight and review of this program. Congress has failed to provide this critical oversight which has led us to the courts. – 72 Democrats Challenge Illegal NSA Domestic Spying, by Congressman John Conyers, Thu May 11, 2006 at 10:38:15 AM PDT (as posted on the DailyKOS).

This program was in no way illegal, highly classified and had been briefed to the Senate Intelligence Committee long before it was brought to the public light. The Department of Justice halted its investigation because of the classified nature of the intelligence operation and the lack of evidence that it was illegal. Also, this program involved NO warrantless wiretapping, only data mining and algorithmic calculation of calling patterns to known/suspected terrorist numbers.

Recently they cheered the ruling of a liberal activist Judge who said that the foreign intercepts that the NSA was conducting on communications involving known/suspected terrorists was illegal. This program involved the monitoring of communications from within this country to numbers know or suspected to be Al-Qaeda related. It only involves monitoring of an American citizen if they are contacting a suspected/know terrorist number. It involved no monitoring of internal communications at all. Thus under the National Security Act of 1947, the Constitutional powers of the President to conduct war and even under the FISA law, which does not apply to foreign communications, it is in every way a legal activity. The Democrats hailed this ruling as a major victory.

Joe Liberman:
A staunch Democrat who votes down the liberal party line 90% of the time, yet had the audacity to support President Bush in his efforts to fight terrorism and the war in Iraq. The Democrats are currently engaged in a wholehearted attempt to destroy Joe Liberman politically and prevent him from running and winning as an Independant in Connecticut. This further proves how intollerant and dangerous the Democratic party has becom. It also means that there is no hope for and no tollerance left for a “moderate” liberal in the party. You must fall in line or be destroyed. The idea that if you don’t support the “Party” then we will destory you, is straight out of Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. Better polish those boots and start practicing the Michael Moore goosestep if you want to be a Democrat.

Foreign Policy:
The Democrats, as are many in this country, are sour on Iraq. They are claiming that it is deterring our fight against terrorism, even though it is the conflict responsible for most of the confirmed eliminations of known terrorists. Many of them want us to pull out of Iraq prematurely. This would be one of the gravest mistakes in modern times. With Iran pursuing nuclear weapons and assisting Hezbollah along with Syria against Israel, a premature withdrawal of forces from Iraq would signal a staggering victory for Islamic extremist and embolden them to become more audacious with their tactics.

The thing I fear the most is that the Democrats keep saying we need a change in Iraq, a different direction. When put to the question and asked directly what they would do in Iraq as Sean Hannity did to a Democratic strategist last night, something very frightening emerges. If answered at all, the response is that they would engage more people in discussion. What? Talk? I am sorry the time for talking is past. What will it take to make these people realize that you cannot talk or negotiate with extremists. My God, if we have learned nothing else I assumed we would have learned that.

We have seen Democratic foreign policy through the mistakes of Bill Clinton. He practically handed North Korea nuclear weapons, refused to take Osama Bin Laden from the Sudan when they offered him up, did nothing in response to the USS Cole and made a horrible mess of Mogadishu by pulling out as soon as things got tough. Mogadishu taught Bin Laden that America was weak and could not handle casualties. His own words, not mine. We cannot afford and may not be able to survive more Democratic foreign policy.

Detention of Combatants:
The Democrats have cheered the illegal decision of the Supreme Court which requires us to apply Geneva Convention rights upon terrorist subjects, in direct violation of the Convention rules. They have tried to convey Constitutional rights on the detainees and allowed them access to the American civil Criminal Justice system. You tax dollars have paid to defend the very people who want to kill you in your own court system. These combatants clearly fall under the jurisdiction of military tribunals since they are 1) not US citizens, 2) were captured in a combat zone on foreign soil and 3) the illegal acts of violence against a recognized military force were committed on foreign soil. They have no standing in a US civilian court.

Bush Lied to Us:
If that were true, then so did every major Democratic leader. They were all saying the same thing when we went to war with Iraq. He was a grave threat. He had to be stopped. Oh, yeah, and he had weapons of mass destruction. I could quote you Albright, Kerry, Clinton, Reid, Pelosi and on and on, all saying the same thing.

No WMD:
Now that we finally have evidence of WMDs, all of a sudden those are not the ones we were looking for. That is about the single lamest argument I have heard during this whole conflict. It

is like telling a police officer who is searching a man’s home for crack cocaine that he should not arrest him for the dead bodies he found in his bedroom. It is insane logic.

Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!:
For what? What crime has the president committed? I challenge anyone to show me one crime that this President has committed. I am not talking all this crap about misleading us to war, the legal illegal intelligence gathering or some whackjob theory of how he personally destroyed the twin towers through some elaborate government plot and controlled explosives. I mean a real crime punishable through impeachment as defined under the Constitution of the United States. If the Democrats gain power, our President may face a push to impeach him on ludicrous charges for the last two years of his term instead of being allowed to continue to fight our enemies.

Ends Do Not Justify Means:
This is more of the rant that circulates the left. Well I am sorry, people but sometimes they just might. Let’s list the ends that we have:

• Two-thirds of Al-Qaeda leadership dead or captured.
• A brutal dictator responsible for the oppression of millions and deaths of hundreds of thousands removed from power.
• Millions of people now free with an elected government and a chance at their own destiny.
• Momar Qadafi has turned over all remaining WMDs and pledged to help Middle East peace.
• Egypt has conducted free democratic elections.
• Multiple terrorist organizations funds have been seized, communications disrupted, leadership dismantled and safe havens reduced.
• Multiple terrorist plots have been stopped before they occurred.
• NO TERRORIST ATTACK ON UNITED STATES HOLDINGS!

I am sorry, but I think those ends have clearly justified the means by which we brought them about.

I fear what will happen if we revert to a Democrat led congress and see Democratic foreign policy return. I fear for my country. I fear for my children.