Posted on 07/19/2013 11:06:57 PM PDT by WilliamIII
en. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room on Tuesday evening where he was asked to respond to former Vice President Dick Cheney who told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace that the junior Kentucky senator was wrong when he criticized the NSA’s surveillance programs. Paul tore into the Bush administration’s role in the establishment of the post-9/11 security regime, noting that he thinks it is possible to catch terrorists using methods consistent with the Constitution.
Cheney told the Fox News Sunday host that Paul was incorrect in his criticisms of the NSA’s communications monitoring programs. The former vice president said that Congress authorized the post-9/11 counterterror programs and there is nothing illegal about them.
RELATED: Rand Paul Slams Obama On NSA Surveillance: ‘Utter Rank Hypocrisy’ Is Why People Hate Gov’t
“What I would ask is who did they fire after 9/11?” Paul asked. “Not one person was fired.”
“Do you remember the ’20th hijacker’?” he continued. “[Zacarias] Moussaoui, captured a month in advance? The FBI agent wrote 70 letters asking, ‘let’s look at this guy’s computer.’ In the FBI, they turned him down.”
“It wasn’t that they couldn’t get a warrant, nobody asked for a warrant,” Paul added. “To me, that was really, really bad intelligence – really bad police work – and, really, someone should have been removed from office for that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
Normally I would agree with VP Cheney on more things than I’d disagree. But here... I think Cheney should talk to Jim Sensenbrenner, who, after all, was largely responsible for the writing of the original Patriot Act, and who has repeatedly said the NSA surveillance has gotten way out of hand / beyond what was ever intended.
Relevant article here:
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/sensenbrenner-nsa-surveillance-congress/2013/07/18/id/515794
I wonder if the Boston bombers might have been stopped if NSA were not hyper-overloaded with data because of their data collection methods?
>> “It wasn’t that they couldn’t get a warrant, nobody asked for a warrant,” Paul added.
No mention of Gorelic’s (sp) wall.
It not terrorism, politics killed 3000 Americans, not agency negligence.
When the Congressional brawls breakout, we’ll know progress is being made. Until then, it’s all kabuki theater.
I really hate seeing infighting like this between decent guys. No wonder the punk POTUS has us on the run.
No.
Rand is right, when do you see anyone in the Government actually pay a price for failure?
Rand is flailing with his generalized attack on “somebody”.
I am not impressed. Whatsoever.
Is he saying that Bush and Cheney should have been impeached? Is he saying the CIA director or FBI director should have been removed? We don’t know, do we, because Rand didn’t have the “intestional fortitude” to spell it out.
Intelligence failure to “connect the dots” was certainly a part of pre-911 failures. Post 911, What Bush & Cheney TRIED to do was remove the barriers to connecting the dots, which were in part THERE because of the WALL put in place by Jamie Gorelick during the Clinton years.
So Clinton was POTUS for EIGHT yrs., then Bush & Cheney were in office for 8 months before 911, and we’re supposed to BLAME the barely-in- office Republicans for 911??
Oh wait - or was it the intelligence community in place at the time we should blame, or was it...now WHO was it specifically that should have been removed from office??
But what were they - whomever in the intelligence community - doing for the EIGHT years while this built up and built up? Oh never mind, Rand is just attacking Dick Cheney because Liz Cheney is going to run against Rand’s new-found Senate buddy Mike Enzi and we can’t have THAT, so must lash out and attack...
Asst. ATTY GEN. Jamie Gorelick’s WALL between sharing foreign and domestic intel. Clinton refusing to take Osama on more than one occasion. Clinton refusing to do anything effective about terrorist attacks prior to 911. All of that, but Rand attacks Dick Cheney??
Over a Senate primary challenge in which Rand is not even involved but has chosen to insert himself and BASH??
Good grief.
What a mess.
That’s because the incident Rand’s referring to didn’t need to pass Gorelick’s firewall for a warrant to be issued.
I agree .... Well said.
I don't see Paul blaming Bush & Cheney for 911. I see him blaming Bush & Cheney for not firing anyone who screwed up and missed the 911 attack. They covered up failure. They covered up Able Danger, which undercovered the 911 plot before the attack.
As typical with Bush & Cheney (ie they didn't communicate), they (or their people) never made the case that Clinton had several opportunities to take out Bin Laden and disrupt al Qaeda.
You obviously missed the point of the article.
Cheney attacked Rand Paul first and defended the expansion of government power that happened during the Bush years.
Then Rand Paul replied that instead of trampling on the constitution to spy on law abiding citizens, the Bush administraton should have fired the people who missed all the clues and failed to defend the country on 9/11.
This is just common sense. One of the hijackers was arrested just before 9/11. Somebody obviously screwed up and failed to prevent the attack. Then their first response is to ask for more power and more money to spy on every law abiding citizen in the country and store all their communications forever in Utah.
This should come as no surprise to anyone living in America. Typical gubmint overreaction to anything be it a crisis or not
Rand is correct in the hypocrisy that these guys use to justify ignoring the Consitution.
Has anything been done to keep foreign Islamic students out of the U.S.?
The security of this nation hasn't improved at all since 9/11, we are still too worried about offending Muslims and won't profile them.
Like I’ve already said... “It’s not like rand has anything more important to do.”
You’re assuming that the purpose of gathering all this information is to catch terrorists. Perhaps you should re-examine your premise.
Help me here: exactly who is decent? Dick of Patriot Act fame or Rand of Dream Act fame?
There’s history between the Bush/Cheney Faction and the Paul faction. It’s like watching the Capulets versus the Montagues. Except this is the “B movie” version and none of the chicks are hot.
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