Thanks ACLU! Watered Down FISA Laws Fail Soldier
Posted on October 15, 2007
Lets not forget who we have to thank for this failure.
“The intelligence community was forced to abandon our soldiers because of the law,” a senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case told The Post.
“How many lawyers does it take to rescue our soldiers?” he asked. “It should be zero.”
The search for SPC Alex Jimenez was held up for nearly ten hours while lawyers quibbled querulously over the ramifications of FISA:
October 15, 2007 — WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.This week, Congress plans to vote on a bill that leaves in place the legal hurdles in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - problems that were highlighted during the May search for a group of kidnapped U.S. soldiers.
Dread Pundit Bluto summarizes:
Even though the cell phones they wanted to tap were operating within Iraq, because the conversations were shunted through US hubs, they were subject to FISA restrictions.
Alex Jimenez has not been found. Al Qaeda says they murdered him and and buried him.
The entire notion that lawyers had to review a statute before military intelligence could pursue the captors of an American soldier in a theater of war is absurd and embarrassing. The proximate embarrassment in this case was Congress’ delay in acting on the FISA problem the moment it arose. The larger embarrassment is that some still insist on applying civil court processes like habeas corpus on enemies captured abroad, which never — never — applied in any war we ever fought before, and that some use the same system to block intelligence efforts that have always been an accepted feature of war since the very beginning of the Republic.
No one got a lawyer when Washington’s men captured the man who carried Benedict Arnold’s offer of West Point to the British, and until this war no one seriously suggested that courts needed to issue warrants to listen to foreign enemies of the US talking to each other. It should take zero lawyers to chase down captors of American soldiers abroad in a theater of war, and any laws that add to that total should be immediately stricken from the record by Congress.
Those who surrender freedom for safety deserve neither, we’re constantly reminded — as if NSA surveillance of terrorist communications, the fruits of which are not usable in court (and so really should pose no civil rights problems) is some kind of civic moral dilemma that strikes right at the heart of What Our Nation Stands For™
Presumably, allowing the NSA to track phone traffic in and out of terrorist hot zones is a surrendering of our freedoms that real patriots (think Glenn Greenwald, or the Kossacks, who represent the “center†— and who oppose all violations of civil liberties, unless they happen to be imposed on neocons) should not be willing to trade for the safety that comes through the use of pattern analysis, etc, by an intelligence agency created for just that purpose.
Unless, of course, a FISA court gets around to saying it’s okay. In which case, the Constitutional problem disappears, with the President’s war time powers handed over to FISA judges and lawyers.
Some separation of powers are more equal than others.
Daily KOS says it is all a Republican Plot!
Weasel Zippers remembers who to blame:
Those soldiers died because of the Democrats and groups like the ACLU who bend over backwards to protect terrorists “rights.” Their blood is on your hands you piece of…
Meanwhile the ACLU are working to expose Military role in FISA and further waterdown FISA laws. They now want individual warrants for each terrorist.
Also see Michelle Malkin
» Filed Under ACLU, News, Politics As Usual, War On Terror
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Another example of the Democrats working for the defeat of the military in the field. They consider their power more important than victory for the military and the president. What they fail to grasp is that if they lose the consequences could be nukes going off in the US and/or an invasion. There are those that say we cannot be invaded. I ask why not?
Those who can not tell freedom from oppression deserve to be oppressed. Alex Jimenez was oppressed by loosing his right to life. His oppressors were those who values his life so little they sacrificed him for what they falsely call freedom.
Yep, kerwin, the Dhimmicrats definitely do not value
a soldier’s life, nor does the aclu.