No Crime in Bush's Spying

Front Page Magazine ^ | 20 December 2005 | Washington Times

[unionblue83]

Below is the Washington Times' editorial on the issue of spying on terrorists. Our only quibble: The National Security Agency's Echelon project spied on "trillions" of American citizens' conversations during the Clinton administration. Otherwise, the editorial is spot-on. -- The Editors.

Should the National Security Agency secretly eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of suspicious persons in the United States calling al-Qaeda operatives overseas? We might be more shocked if the Bush administration hadn't authorized such surveillance, provided it was done within the law. NSA's substantial resources, like those of the CIA and the military, should be properly and legally harnessed to fight the al-Qaeda threat wherever it appears.

Questions have been raised whether President Bush can do this without violating the law. He thinks he can: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows it, with congressional oversight and checks on executive authority, as well as presidential war powers. The guardians of civil liberties who object may be mistaking precedent -- that the NSA didn't engage in domestic spying activities until late 2001 or early 2002 -- for a nonexistent law saying that it can't.

[unionblue83]

You may be new, but you get it. Too bad some of these others don't.

[unionblue83]

Documents unclassified after 50+ years revealed that Roosevelt was right in his belief that the Japanese gov't was setting up a network of 1st and 2nd generation Japanese to undermine our war efforts and to spy on military and industiral installations. My forebears fought, bled and died to free the slaves and they were successful. Women did get the right to vote or did you just drop via some strange time travel device? Slavery was and is wrong no matter what and the error of the ways of a few of our countrymen was corrected. Unfortunately is still exists in the world today - and it's still wrong. We have learned from our mistakes in the past by knowing the past. Too bad your argument is trying to ignore the history that occurred in September of 2001.