Shouldnt Bush be impeached for spying on US citize

[Occhidiangela]

I'm no lawyer, but as far as I can tell the actions of the Bush administration are completely illegal, all the more so since it appears that some surveillance of purely domestic US communication is taking place, presumably by mistake.

Their rationale seems to be that the executive branch has virtually unlimited power in a time of self-declared and indefinite war. To make it extreme, I suppose by the same token you could argue it would be legal to shoot US citizens sleeping at home if the executive branch said it was justified.
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Thanks for the links. :) The Slate article is a bit dated regarding the Patriot Act, the Senate showed some (belated) reservations. I agree that Congress was "being hasty" when they slapped it together. I don't agree with her assumption that measures to codify how to deal with Fourth Generation Warfare should be held hostage to the Ostrich approach of outdated statues. FISA is a Cold War relic. That said, it is the law on the books. That means something.

The FISA ruling seemd to cover both Ashcroft's filings and some filings AG Reno made in 1995. Looks like AG Ashcroft was asking too much wiggle room on that law, partly due to its being dated, partly to preclude having to get legislation sponsored that updated that statue.

FISA's legal language has the standard problem of being a relic of the cold war, and of the internal political war against the CIA waged in the 1970's. In FISA's defense, it clarified some previously gray areas. It's process is cumbersome in the digital age, satellite linked age. It leaves the fifth column actor well inside the decision cycle of the counter intelligence or counter terrorist agents.

I'd guess that until IED's go off routinely in the US, as they do weekly or daily in Iraq, Americans won't "get" what it is they are up against. The gritty reality is that there is no security. The WTC attacks of 1993 and 2001 were as much symbolic as deliberately murderous. The US is still, for my money, losing the war of symbols.

Segue to "The War on Terror." IIRC, the Congress did not declare that war. It is a piece of clumsy rhetoric masquerading as policy guidance. (I have an expeditionary medal for being in the "Global War on Terror." GWOT. I refer to it as my medal for T.W.A.T: The War Against Terror." :P)

FISA's shortcoming as a tool against modern fifth column activity highlights both the Clinton and the Bush Administration's failure to reform the relationships between FBI, CIA, NSA, and other counter espionage organs, to harness our full capability to deal with criminal and extranational movements, both internationally and internally. I don't think of the West Coast Cripps as much different than Colombian narco terrorists.

If FISA is all we can come up with for policy guidance, the crooks and terrorists are free to loophole surf, to exploit strategic weaknesses at the seams. This approach is conceptually identical to the Marine Corps doctrine on Maneuver Warfare.

Those politically opposed to Pres Bush, for a variety of reasons, continue to let their contempt for his administration blind themselves to the current and future security environment. For that matter, Bush and Company are wearing blinders of a different sort. Few of them admit that the so called War on Terrorism is decades old. The Cold War Light with Iran has been going on since 1979. The struggle with the various narco terrorists and otherwise motivated terrorists have been a problem since at least 1972.

FISA language ignores the extra national actor. It is legislation unsuited to American Security in the year 1995, much less 2005. The "Ostrich Hides Head in Sand" approach to extranational groups is a strategic weakness. It requires action and policy to fix that. This policy weakness is no excuse for breaking the law.

Note: some law is created when a law is broken and then the law itself comes under fire in the courts. ;) Perhaps GW Bush and VP Cheney are embarking on a bizarre imitation of civil disobedience. <_<

I am not content with FISA being the only legal matter at hand. The crux of the legal matter is nearly Constitutional, since the White House seems to be pushing for a new agreement on what authorities and powers a President has in unconventional war

NOT

what powers he has in "time of peace" to deal with espionage, or a simpler conventional war against "foreign powers." What a quaint notion.

If the war used as reference is the War on Terror, rather than the War in Iraq, or the War in Afghanistan, then your comment on the forever war model hits the bullseye. The proper course of action is to make a better case for better policy tools to deal with Fourth Generation War, and extranational threats.

I guess that is too much like work for anyone in this Administration, not to mention the whole Congress who have had this issue in front of them since the Clinton administration, and since the 1993 WTC bombing. If correcting or over riding FISA is such a good idea -- dear Republicans of the House and Senate who attack the President's critics on this matter -- why a lack of support for WJ Clinton and his AG on this matter?

The world wonders. ;)

Occhi

PS: Rockefeller's complaint is almost unbelievable. From a Washington Post article today about a FISA judge quitting over this bruhaha.

Rockefeller said the secrecy surrounding the briefings left him with no other choice. "I made my concerns known to the vice president and to others who were briefed," Rockefeller said. "The White House never addressed my concerns."

I agree with Senator McCain's suggestion that Rockefeller is a moral coward. Added to his condition as a pompous ass of a senator, I'd like to grant Sen Reckefeller of West Virginia (right!) the "Oxygen Thief of the Week" award. In yesterday's article, where he discussed his classified memo, he complained, basically, that he was too stupid to understand the briefings he got. Due to security classification was unable to share his notes with a staffer. Were he as confident a man as Ted Kennedy, I suspect he'd have sounded off a lot sooner.

Occhi