George Bush protecting your civil liberties by breaking them

I think it's counter-productive to attack Bush for this and claim this is something new when it is not. The unstated message is this is something only Bush has done instead of enlightening people to the fact this is standard operating procedure all the time with the intelligence community.So I am responding to what I feel is a lie.If you want people that follow such practices to take you seriously and not to think you are just following partisan politics, you will admit this is not something new, and equally deplore the NSA, CIA, Clinton, Carter, etc,...doing the same thing, and without even the pretext of war.

Somehow I doubt that since it did come out. Besides independent news media like WorldNetDaily running with the Echelon story for years, eventually even Blather and company ran with it.I didn't see too many liberal democrats caring about back then though.

Where are you Randman? Even the Bush administration is admitting that what he did is different, even if necessary.Yes, parallel things have occured, but not exactly the same thing.And regardless, I am not worried about whether this is new or not. I did not say hey lets get him because this is NEW. I said what is happening is WRONG. That's why I wanted it stopped. I'm sorry, a lie? You are accusing me of lying? You and Tal are must be some of the thickest people I have ever met...1) I AM NOT A DEMOCRAT! I SUPPORT SOME REPUBLICANS! THIS CANNOT BE PARTISAN POLITICS!
2) I ALREADY SAID I DEPLORED SIMILAR STUFF NO MATTER WHO IT WOULD BE FROM!
3) I ALREADY SAID I DISLIKED CLINTON AND THOUGHT HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT FOR CERTAIN RIGHTS ISSUES!I'm hoping the caps will help you read what I have already told you many times before.What you could do to remove the illusion of your partisanship, would be to quit refering to precedent, or to misrepresentations of what authors are politically and what they think, and deal with the present issue.It appears you are arguing that you don't have to deal with the issue, discussing it factually, because you can pick on strawman forever and ever regarding accusors.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Holmes I am accusing the story of containing a *** , not you.

Bush's official defenders have stated that his powers were newly acquired, or settled. That inherently means that he is doing something that is not exactly like what has gone on before... even if it is defensible.James Woolsey (former head of the CIA), while suggesting the debate of whether he should be able to have the powers he took upon himself, states that the defense for far given is weak and not clear at all. I fully admit he disagrees with my position that it is clearly wrong, but he equally holds in contempt that it is clearly valid. In any case that suggests that even a CIA head believes the actions are not business as usual.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I have previously explained your fallacy about echelon. Your argument is bogus and wrong. You are taking your arguments from conservative talking points and are ignoring the facts I clearly pointed out earlier. How typical! Dogma is the only thing that seems important to you. As you continually ignore facts even when they are shown to you.This message has been edited by Theodoric, 12-24-2005 12:55 PM

Licoln suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus from 1861-1862, of which then Maryland Justice Tanney ruled against as unconstitutional. However, Licoln waved such criticism aside as the words of a Southern gentleman and continued. Roughly 13,000+ people were arrested in something resembling martial law in the US.I'll leave debate as to the justice or merit of Licoln's actions to historians, but I will delicately point out that THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS IN NO WAY SIMILAR TO THE @#%#@ CIVIL WAR! The idea that the "war" on terror is in anyway related to an actual war with a defined opposition is ridiculous. We in America truly have suffered little to make so careless a comparisson. We do not have an economy ravaged, the future of the nation in doubt, or even any true threat to the stability of this government itself (outside our own decisions, of course).If you honestly think that the "war" on terror or any other emotion is comprable to the revolutionary or civil wars, then you are truly fortunate to be so distanced from the real tragedy of warfare.Vale,
Theus

theodric, your "explanation" is thoroughly unsubstantiated and frankly plain wrong. Echelon is and was used to eavesdrop all the time, and yes, on communications all over the world.

the problem is we don't really know if the war on terrorism is that serious or not.....there are reports in US News and World Report of feds searching for nukes in Mosques in DC, and in such a manner to suggest thye believe there is a nuclear or radiological weapon in DC of some sort.Now, maybe this is a hoax, but if an nuclear blast goes off in an American city, what will you say then? Probably that BUsh let down on the job.

well, in the old days we declared war on countries, not ideas.

this administration has never been that good with words and rhetoric

no no, just the president. the administration is quite good at it. i mean, changing "estate tax" to "death tax" is nothing short of brilliant. and making the word "liberal" a bad thing? wow.they're QUITE good at manipulating words. look at "war." we have wars on drugs, and terror, and christmas. in the old days, we had wars with countries, or perhaps even militant groups. the only word i can think of for what "war" means today is arabic: jihad.

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אָרַח

Which is amazing because that's pretty much all they use to solve problems. Perhaps it is better stated as:Their words and rhetoric have never been good enough to compensate for their failures.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Thanks for the info on Lincoln. I'll have to look into that more. At first glance I'd have to agree with Tanney.I also agree with you that the situations are completely different between then and now. Perhaps his actions might at least have seemed credible (even if wrong) based on the threat the nation was faced with. There simply is no excuse in this instance for what Bush did. For all the talk of what he had a right to do, he has never explained why he would have needed to exert that "emergency" right. He could have gone to the court to get the warrants.And of course there is one other factor which mitigates what Lincoln did. He was successful. Not only was there an emergency, but he successfully dealt with it. Bush has been one disaster after another. There really was more freedom after Lincoln. There really is less freedom after Bush.Indeed was lincoln calling for a permanent suspension of habeus corpus, as Bush is asking for suspension of rights for the eternal War on Terror?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Absolutely. He has let down on the job.The totally pointless invasion of Iraq redirected limited resources away from dealing with the threat of terrorism. No one has ever said that we should not try to minimize the impact of terrorism. What has been said is that this Administration has totally misunderstood the threat and has done a lousy job of addressing it.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion