Spy court judge quits in protest

"A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources."

Wiretap Mystery: Spooks React

"A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between midly creeped out and completely pissed off."

"It's drilled into you  from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen," one source says. "You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don't fuck with your own people."

9/11 timeline:  201-300 of 1705 events

"President Clinton signs additional, more explicit directives authorizing the CIA to plan the assassination of bin Laden. The initial emphasis is on capturing bin Laden and only killing him if the capture attempt is unsuccessful. The military is unhappy about this, so Clinton continues to sign additional directives before leaving office, each one authorizing the use of lethal force more clearly than the one before. [Washington Post, 2/22/04 (B)]"

All wars invite abuses of civil liberties at home, and the vague declaration of war against terrorism is worse than most in this regard.  As our liberties here at home are diminished by the Patriot Act and national ID card legislation, we succumb to the temptation of all empires to neglect habeas corpus, employ torture tactics, and use secret imprisonment. These domestic and foreign policy trends reflect a morally bankrupt philosophy, devoid of any concern for liberty and the rule of law.

The American people are becoming more aware of the serious crisis this country faces.  Their deep concern is reflected in the current mood in Congress.  The recent debate over Iraq shows the parties are now looking for someone to blame for the mess we’re in.  It’s a high stakes political game.  The fact that a majority of both parties and their leadership endorsed the war, and accept the same approach toward Iran and Syria, does nothing to tone down the accusatory nature of the current blame game. 

The argument in Washington is over tactics, quality of intelligence, war management, and diplomacy, except for the few who admit that tragic mistakes were made and now sincerely want to establish a new course for Iraq.  Thank goodness for those who are willing to reassess and admit to these mistakes.  Those of us who have opposed the war all along welcome them to the cause of peace.

If we hope to pursue a more sensible foreign policy, it is imperative that Congress face up to its explicit constitutional responsibility to declare war.  It’s easy to condemn the management of a war one endorsed, while deferring the final decision about whether to deploy troops to the president.  When Congress accepts and assumes its awesome responsibility to declare war, as directed by the Constitution, fewer wars will be fought.

Sadly, the acrimonious blame game is motivated by the leadership of both parties for the purpose of gaining, or retaining, political power.  It doesn’t approach a true debate over the wisdom, or lack thereof, of foreign military interventionism and pre-emptive war.

Polls indicate ordinary Americans are becoming uneasy with our prolonged war in Iraq, which has no end in sight.  The fact that no one can define victory precisely, and most American see us staying in Iraq for years to come, contribute to the erosion of support for this war.  Currently 63% of Americans disapprove of the handling of the war, and 52% say it’s time to come home.  42% say we need a foreign policy of minding our own business.  This is very encouraging.

The percentages are even higher for the Iraqis.  82% want us to leave, while 67% claim they are less secure with our troops there.  Ironically, our involvement has produced an unusual agreement among the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, the three factions at odds with each other.  At the recent 22-member Arab League meeting in Cairo, the three groups agreed on one issue: they all want foreign troops to leave.  At the end of the meeting an explicit communiqué was released: “We demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable, and the establishment of a national and immediate program for rebuilding the armed forces… that will allow them to guard Iraq’s borders and get control of the security situation.”  Since the administration is so enamored with democracy, why not have a national referendum in Iraq to see if the people want us to leave?

After we left Lebanon in the 1980s, the Arab League was instrumental in brokering an end to that country’s 15-year civil war.  Its chances of helping to stop the fighting in Iraq are far better than depending on the UN, NATO, or the United States.  This is a regional dispute that we stirred up but cannot settle.  The Arab League needs to assume a lot more responsibility for the mess that our invasion has caused.  We need to get out of the way and let them solve their own problems.

Remember, once we left Lebanon suicide terrorism stopped and peace finally came.  The same could happen in Iraq.

Ron Paul (R-Texas)

Everyone is talking about the downside of us leaving, and the civil war that might erupt.  Possibly so, but no one knows with certainty what will happen.  There was no downside when we left Vietnam.  But one thing for sure, after a painful decade of killing in the 1960s, the killing stopped and no more Americans died once we left.  We now trade with Vietnam and enjoy friendly relations with them.  This was achieved through peaceful means, not military force.  The real question is how many more Americans must be sacrificed for a policy that is not working?  Are we going to fight until we go broke and the American people are impoverished?  Common sense tells us it’s time to reassess the politics of military intervention and not just look for someone to blame for falling once again into the trap of a military quagmire.

The blame game is a political event, designed to avoid the serious philosophic debate over our foreign policy of interventionism.  The mistakes made by both parties in dragging us into an unwise war are obvious, but the effort to blame one group over the other confuses the real issue.  Obviously Congress failed to meet its constitutional obligation regarding war.  Debate over prewar intelligence elicits charges of errors, lies, and complicity.  It is now argued that those who are critical of the outcome in Iraq are just as much at fault, since they too accepted flawed intelligence when deciding to support the war.  This charge is leveled at previous administrations, foreign governments, Members of Congress, and the United Nations-- all who made the same mistake of blindly accepting the prewar intelligence.  Complicity, errors of judgment, and malice are hardly an excuse for such a serious commitment as a pre-emptive war against a non-existent enemy.

Both sides accepted the evidence supposedly justifying the war, evidence that was not credible.   No weapons of mass destruction were found.  Iraq had no military capabilities. Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were not allies (remember, we were allies of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden), and Saddam Hussein posed no threat whatsoever to the United States or his neighbors.

We hear constantly that we must continue the fight in Iraq, and possibly in Iran and Syria, because, “It’s better to fight the terrorists over there than here.”  Merely repeating this justification, if it is based on a major analytical error, cannot make it so.  All evidence shows that our presence in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries benefits al Qaeda in its recruiting efforts, especially in its search for suicide terrorists.  This one fact prompts a rare agreement among all religious and secular Muslim factions; namely, that the U.S. should leave all Arab lands.  Denying this will not keep terrorists from attacking us, it will do the opposite.

The fighting and terrorist attacks are happening overseas because of a publicly stated al Qaeda policy that they will go for soft targets-- our allies whose citizens object to the war like Spain and Italy.  They will attack Americans who are more exposed in Iraq.  It is a serious error to conclude that “fighting them over there” keeps them from fighting us “over here,” or that we’re winning the war against terrorism.  As long as our occupation continues, and American forces continue killing Muslims, the incentive to attack us will grow.  It shouldn’t be hard to understand that the responsibility for violence in Iraq-- even violence between Iraqis-- is blamed on our occupation.  It is more accurate to say, “the longer we fight them over there the longer we will be threatened over here.”

The final rhetorical refuge for those who defend the war, not yet refuted, is the dismissive statement that “the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.”  It implies no one can question anything we have done because of this fact.  Instead of an automatic concession it should be legitimate, though politically incorrect, to challenge this disarming assumption.  No one has to like or defend Saddam Hussein to point out we won’t know whether the world is better off until someone has taken Saddam Hussein’s place.

This argument was never used to justify removing murderous dictators with much more notoriety than Saddam Hussein, such as our ally Stalin; Pol Pot, whom we helped get into power; or Mao Tse Tung.  Certainly the Soviets, with their bloody history and thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at us, were many times over a greater threat to us than Saddam Hussein ever was.  If containment worked with the Soviets and the Chinese, why is it assumed without question that deposing Saddam Hussein is obviously and without question a better approach for us than containment?

The “we’re all better off without Saddam Hussein” cliché doesn’t address the question of whether the 2,100 troops killed or the 20,000 wounded and sick troops are better off.  We refuse to acknowledge the hatred generated by the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens who are written off as collateral damage.  Are the Middle East and Israel better off with the turmoil our occupation has generated?  Hardly!  Honesty would have us conclude that conditions in the Middle East are worse since the war started: the killing never stops, and the cost is more than we can bear-- both in lives and limbs lost and dollars spent.

In spite of the potential problems that may or may not come with our withdrawal, the greater mistake was going in the first place.  We need to think more about how to avoid these military encounters, rather than dwelling on the complications that result when we meddle in the affairs of others with no moral or legal authority to do so.  We need less blame game and more reflection about the root cause of our aggressive foreign policy.

By limiting the debate to technical points over intelligence, strategy, the number of troops, and how to get out of the mess, we ignore our continued policy of sanctions, threats, and intimidation of Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Syria.  Even as Congress pretends to argue about how or when we might come home, leaders from both parties continue to support the policy of spreading the war by precipitating a crisis with these two countries.

The likelihood of agreeing about who deliberately or innocently misled Congress, the media, and the American people is virtually nil.  Maybe historians at a later date will sort out the whole mess.  The debate over tactics and diplomacy will go on, but that only serves to distract from the important issue of policy.  Few today in Congress are interested in changing from our current accepted policy of intervention to one of strategic independence:  No nation building, no policing the world, no dangerous alliances.

"James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, said the program could be problematic because it bypasses a special court set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize eavesdropping on suspected terrorists.

"I didn't hear him specify any legal right, except his right as president, which in a democracy doesn't make much sense."  "Today, what Bush said is he went around the law, which is a violation of the law — which is illegal."