Posted on 12/03/2004 9:35:08 AM PST by Ed Current
It could happen any day now: A U.S. military unit heads into an urban combat zone in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. Its members believe they know where Abu Musab Zarqawi is hiding. Their mission is to capture or kill the most murderous terrorist this side of Osama bin Laden.
Their chance of succeeding--and getting back alive--will be enhanced by accurate and timely intelligence fed to them from overhead satellites.
Question: Who should control those satellites?
Should it be the military commanders of the troops heading into combat? Or should it be a civilian bureaucrat--removed from the military chain of command--sitting in a velvet-draped office in Washington, D.C.?
Right now, the military controls the spy satellites that collect "tactical" intelligence for use in combat. Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency uses these very same satellites for collecting "strategic" intelligence (about things like those suspected Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpiles that the CIA--while relying on the satellites--did not recruit a single Iraqi spy to track down and verify on the ground).
Licensed Hijackers
The National Security Agency, which intercepts, decodes and translates communications, the National Reconaissance Office, which operates the surveillance satellites themselves, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes and integrates the data gathered into maps and other combat-usable applications, are all part of the Department of Defense. Their budget requests are generated by the military, and their chain of command runs from the commanders in the field, through the secretary of Defense, to the commander in chief in the White House.
Liberal Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, wants to take authority over these satellites away from the military commanders and give it to a newly minted civilian bureaucrat, known as the National Intelligence Director, who will have ultimate administrative authority over all intelligence operations both military and civilian. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, wants to do that, too.
House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.) is standing up for American warriors in the field by standing in the way of Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman.
Hunter is right. Collins and Lieberman are wrong. This is the main conflict that has held up the "intelligence reform" bill that Congress is currently considering in response to the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Now, consider another case. This one, sadly, already came to pass:
Nineteen al Qaeda terrorists board four U.S. jetliners. They identify themselves to the airlines using some of the 63 separate driver's licenses that had been issued to them by various U.S. states--and, in some instances, which they had secured with the help of illegal aliens who had already learned how to manipulate the lax practices of state departments of motor vehicles.
The terrorists hijack the jets and crash them into the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Northern Virginia, and a field in Western Pennsylvania. They murder more than 3,000 people.
In response to these attacks, thousands of U.S. troops are deployed to Afghanistan to root out the terrorist bosses of these calculated killers. A global war on terror is launched. Many billions of dollars are spent. Many brave, young U.S. fighters are killed or wounded in battle.
Almost three years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, a special federal commission set up to study why the U.S. was so vulnerable recommends that the federal government "set standards for the issuance of . . . driver's licenses."
Never mind that it took three years and a panel of muckity-mucks to arrive at this simple, commonsense application of the federal government's core constitutional function of securing the nation against foreign enemies and providing laws to regulate the immigration and naturalization of aliens. The fact is: The recommendation has not yet been implemented.
If another set of al Qaeda killers were to enter the United States this morning--this time walking illegally across the Mexican or Canadian border--many U.S. states would still give them driver's licenses.
This is another conflict holding up the bill in response to the commission's recommendations. House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.) is insisting that the bill actually carry out the commission's recommendation on setting national standards for driver's licenses. The House has proposed language that would effectively bar states from giving licenses to illegal aliens.
Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman are against this, too.
The majority of the Republicans in the House support the principled stand Hunter and Sensenbrenner have taken on the bill. House Speaker Dennis Hastert two weeks ago refused to bring a bill to a vote without the support of these two key chairmen. Liberals in the House, the Senate and the establishment press want to force Hunter and Sensenbrenner to surrender. But these two conservatives are standing up for America. President Bush should stand with them and insist that Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins surrender.
BTT
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Should it be the military commanders of the troops heading into combat? Or should it be a civilian bureaucrat--removed from the military chain of command--sitting in a velvet-draped office in Washington, D.C.?
Richard Miniter Losing Bin Laden showed the Clinton team watching OBL on Predator video and not taking the Hellfire shot--
Proof positive the nut-crunching decisions cannot be left to DC bozocrats.
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Those who say efficient quick electronic checks cannot work are lying - Witness the VISA & Master Card checks and clerks cutting bad risk cards in half right in front of the customers in stores
Same can be done with driver's licenses and non-USA citizens's other IDs which should have a RED BORDER
Illegal aliens even get quality faked Social Security cards and driver's licenses thru Bill Clinton's Motor Voter scam and the drive AND VOTE illegally
Illegal aliens also sneak into the USA via Puerto Rico where they buy faked Birth Certificates and become INSTANT American citizens and then fly into Miami or Dallas or Atlanta
Illegal aliens can also buy fake PR Birth Certificate via the web or in scam shops here or order them from PR by phone and pay by credit card or money transfer in just a few minutes
Then they can get driver's licenses, vote, get SSI, food stamp cards, public subsized Section 8 housing, SS, and many more bennies you are paying for as they then bring in their "wives" and "kids", etc
Just one illegal alien can cost the USA taxpayer millions of dollars in a short time
CAUTION! :
Free Republic is full of fakeroo Conservatives who are pro "Open-Borders", La Raza members, nutcase lib leftie church activists and clergy, immigration attorneys and activists, Commies, One-Worlders, Open-Border LBs, crooked employers and even illegal aliens posting here on FR threads
Their hand is in your pocket right now
If they do not pay taxes yet get away with breaking USA laws why can't you?
Ask your politicians which ones you can break and which income taxes and employee witholding deductions you can ignore!
14th Ammendment does not say some "people" are more equal than others
The ACLU, NAACP, LaRaza, radical federal judges, immigration attorneys need to be highlighted and profiled on many websites and hounded and exposed
Publish their photos, resumes, addresses, personal and family info, etc on the web like Republic college students did on radical lib/dem leftist college faculty profs and instructors - It drove the radicals nutty and the tried to censor/shut down those websites!
We know how to do it after the 2004 election run-up
Any FR members who are employers who justify using illegal aliens for themselves or other employers need to "outed" now - You know who they are! They are criminal felons with agendas lobbying here on FR to covert you FReepers while robbing you blind!
Let's hit the afterburners and smoke 'em!
http://pro.lookingat.us/Stinkin.wav
bttt
"Mexico is SO FAR unworthy of any trust from it's TOP that it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider ANY proposal much less their FULL-ON belly laughs of late!"
Roger Hedgecock pointed out that Mexico has us over a barrel... of oil. They are selling us a lot of oil, undercutting OPEC. Once again, our failure to drill for oil at home makes us dependent on other countries. That is the dirty little secret about our border problem. Sick, isn't it?
Just imagine, we might lose an entire city to a WMD because we aren't drilling in ANWR. The good news is we are saving the caribou from the pipeline [who will jump on that lie?]
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