Direct to Michael P. Reilly
Sep. 21st, 2009 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariIn response to a facebook link to the Onion about Geroge W. Bush's presidency: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/george_w_bush_chuckles_to_self
>>>Michael P Reilly writes:
>>>I always got the feeling that he was most concerned about the Threat to
>>>U.S. National Security from those who Attacked and Inflicted the
>>>$7,000,000,000. loss that was the WTC [not to mention the loss of
>>>Innocent lives at the WTC/Pentagon and Air Passengers.]
>>Jenn Dolari writes:
>>I feel that, too, Michael. But I think he brought us closer to the brink
>>of fascism and a police state in trying to protect us. I doubt he has
>>any remorse about that, because he prolly thinks what he did was the
>>right thing, and sadly, that's the hell of it.
>Michael P. Reilly writes:
>Jenn, it’s not sad at all- Bush did do the ‘right thing’ (in trying to
>make us ‘safer’ [then we were in the aftermath of the Clinton years].)
Beg to differ. Clinton WARNED bush about Bin Laden. Told him he needed
to go after the guy. Instead Bush focused on Saddam Hussein. Even his
Counterterrrism Czar couldn't get the administration to focus on the guy:
“Because I had been told by Dr. Rice and her deputy that this was a
briefing on countering the cyber threats and not on al-Qaeda and that I
would have my opportunity on al-Qaeda if I just held on, eventually they
would get to it, probably in September.” (This was mention in January
2001)
http://web.archive.org/web/20040410012440/abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/clarke_interview_transcript_040408-5.html
However - I'm willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on this. Just
as I don't think Clinton was negligent through malice on Al Qaeda, I don't
think Bush was negligent through malice. It was in the back of their
minds for both of them.
>The ‘proof’ is that in the 2,687 days that followed the aftermath of
>9-11-01 we did not have further attacks on U.S. soil and instead we (the
>Americans and our Allies) took the fight geographically closer to the
>Enemy. That was precisely the best ‘first step’.
I'll give you that the Afghan War (which I actually consider a "just" war)
has actually kept Al Qaeda from executing attacks, but not organizing
them. Spain and the UK had further attacks, and the UK is far far far
deeper down the surveillance and reporting rabbit hole than we are. We've
been lucky, our distance gives us relative protection.
>Domestically, it was noble but ultimately weak to not target Radical
>Islamic Terrorists as enemies here as well. [Although if you have been
>reading current events you are aware of the fruits of Bush Administration
>Counter Terrorism Ops that have recently apprehended ‘Najibullah Zazi,
>25, an Afghan, (who) visited (the neighborhood I grew up in in Queens NY)
>from Colorado on the 9/11 anniversary carrying a laptop with bomb-making
>notes he wrote.’ (Read more:
>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/09/20/2009-09-20_najibullah_zazi_admitted_receiving_weapons_and_explosives_training_from_alqaeda_.html#ixzz0RmSIwwKp
>)] So SOMEBODY is doing SOMETHING “Right”-in spite of all the Internet
>whining and chatter
Far be it from me to call you a whiner (Wow, I haven't heard the "chatter"
reference since my old CB days). Anyways, I'm all for going after Radical
Islamic Terrorists. Or Homegrown Right-Wing Terrorists. Or anyone who
plans to blow up buildings, people, cars, dogs, cats. The secret word is
TERRORIST. Everyone has to have their due dilligence and due process.
They must be suspected as one, and the warrants on that suspicion should
be made through lawful means. Many of the Patriot Act laws did catch
folks in the process of doing bad things. And subjected Not Guilty people
to illegal warrantless wiretapping and surveillance they should not have
had to deal with. Some people say "Hey, if you're not guilty,
there's nothing to worry about." I say "The ends do not justify the
means." It's not our job to make governments work easier at our expense.
They should work HARDER to make sure they're getting people without
rounding up the innocent as well.
I also would not call a war waged on a second front, with misleading and
outright wrong information tailored to gain popular opinion, "right."
>What will be BEYOND Sad is what could and will happen if the current
>Administration decides to rule against the requests of Senior Military
>Commanders with ‘Boots on the Ground’ in Afghanistan the way former
>Secretary of Defense Les Aspin did during the Clinton
>Administration in Somalia (Blackhawk Down)- (He should have been held
>accountable for the MURDER of those Brave U.S. RANGERS. ) That horrible
>possibility coupled with the lack of attention placed on our Borders and
>Immigration will lead to the facilitation of our Enemies ability to bring
>THEIR Fight to our shores again.
Heh. As someone who has had to cross the Mexican and Canadian ones!)
numerous times, we're good on that front. The Canadian border could use
some beefing up, sure, but I drove Avenue Zero all along the border, and
really only found one place I could cross over without a real problem.
Assuming I want to crash my car/truck/van into a thick orchard of trees.
People CAN walk over the Canadian border illegally (in fact, I saw one
place where it's done regularly near Point Roberts). But you can't carry
much in without a caravan of people, which is MUCH more suspicious in
Canada than Mexico.
Anyways, the war we're fighting in Afghanistan, I do agree with. The
Taliban housed Bin Laden, and that safe haven allowed him to do 9/11.
Thing is, he's not there anymore (he's in Pakistan's Frontier area), and
we can't bomb the Taliban back into the stone age, cause the mountains of
Tora Bora are already there. I think that war is no longer a war, but a
"peacekeeping" phase (well, more like a Whack-A-Mole phase. There's no
more war left to do there...you simply have to put out the fires as they
come up, and if you happen to extinguish it while doing so, great).
>As to the ‘domestic fascism and trampling of the U.S. Constitution’ you
>allege, I feel your pain and invite you to read what Taxachusetts is
>doing!
>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/18/sjc_oks_secret_use_of_gps_devices/
>N.B. That Commonwealth is being run by Democrats. VERY SCARY!!!
>MPR
From that same article:
>“We hold that warrants for GPS monitoring of a vehicle may be issued,’’
>Cowin wrote. “The Commonwealth must establish, before a magistrate . . .
>that GPS monitoring of the vehicle will produce evidence’’ that a crime
>has been committed or will be committed in the near future.
[...]
>Leahy said the SJC ruling also means that police must persuade a judge
>they have probable cause before the GPS devices can be installed.
I don't see that tracking is an "Illegal Search and Seizure" issue. It's
a surveillance issue, and yeah, I have a problem with being tracked. That
said...there's a warrant. And the person must have probable cause. And
pursuade a judge. Due process. Due dilligence. It's when the warrant
says "Yeah, a guy lives in this area who might be a baddie...track
everyone's car on that block" that I've got a problem.
>>>Michael P Reilly writes:
>>>I always got the feeling that he was most concerned about the Threat to
>>>U.S. National Security from those who Attacked and Inflicted the
>>>$7,000,000,000. loss that was the WTC [not to mention the loss of
>>>Innocent lives at the WTC/Pentagon and Air Passengers.]
>>Jenn Dolari writes:
>>I feel that, too, Michael. But I think he brought us closer to the brink
>>of fascism and a police state in trying to protect us. I doubt he has
>>any remorse about that, because he prolly thinks what he did was the
>>right thing, and sadly, that's the hell of it.
>Michael P. Reilly writes:
>Jenn, it’s not sad at all- Bush did do the ‘right thing’ (in trying to
>make us ‘safer’ [then we were in the aftermath of the Clinton years].)
Beg to differ. Clinton WARNED bush about Bin Laden. Told him he needed
to go after the guy. Instead Bush focused on Saddam Hussein. Even his
Counterterrrism Czar couldn't get the administration to focus on the guy:
“Because I had been told by Dr. Rice and her deputy that this was a
briefing on countering the cyber threats and not on al-Qaeda and that I
would have my opportunity on al-Qaeda if I just held on, eventually they
would get to it, probably in September.” (This was mention in January
2001)
http://web.archive.org/web/20040410012440/abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/clarke_interview_transcript_040408-5.html
However - I'm willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on this. Just
as I don't think Clinton was negligent through malice on Al Qaeda, I don't
think Bush was negligent through malice. It was in the back of their
minds for both of them.
>The ‘proof’ is that in the 2,687 days that followed the aftermath of
>9-11-01 we did not have further attacks on U.S. soil and instead we (the
>Americans and our Allies) took the fight geographically closer to the
>Enemy. That was precisely the best ‘first step’.
I'll give you that the Afghan War (which I actually consider a "just" war)
has actually kept Al Qaeda from executing attacks, but not organizing
them. Spain and the UK had further attacks, and the UK is far far far
deeper down the surveillance and reporting rabbit hole than we are. We've
been lucky, our distance gives us relative protection.
>Domestically, it was noble but ultimately weak to not target Radical
>Islamic Terrorists as enemies here as well. [Although if you have been
>reading current events you are aware of the fruits of Bush Administration
>Counter Terrorism Ops that have recently apprehended ‘Najibullah Zazi,
>25, an Afghan, (who) visited (the neighborhood I grew up in in Queens NY)
>from Colorado on the 9/11 anniversary carrying a laptop with bomb-making
>notes he wrote.’ (Read more:
>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/09/20/2009-09-20_najibullah_zazi_admitted_receiving_weapons_and_explosives_training_from_alqaeda_.html#ixzz0RmSIwwKp
>)] So SOMEBODY is doing SOMETHING “Right”-in spite of all the Internet
>whining and chatter
Far be it from me to call you a whiner (Wow, I haven't heard the "chatter"
reference since my old CB days). Anyways, I'm all for going after Radical
Islamic Terrorists. Or Homegrown Right-Wing Terrorists. Or anyone who
plans to blow up buildings, people, cars, dogs, cats. The secret word is
TERRORIST. Everyone has to have their due dilligence and due process.
They must be suspected as one, and the warrants on that suspicion should
be made through lawful means. Many of the Patriot Act laws did catch
folks in the process of doing bad things. And subjected Not Guilty people
to illegal warrantless wiretapping and surveillance they should not have
had to deal with. Some people say "Hey, if you're not guilty,
there's nothing to worry about." I say "The ends do not justify the
means." It's not our job to make governments work easier at our expense.
They should work HARDER to make sure they're getting people without
rounding up the innocent as well.
I also would not call a war waged on a second front, with misleading and
outright wrong information tailored to gain popular opinion, "right."
>What will be BEYOND Sad is what could and will happen if the current
>Administration decides to rule against the requests of Senior Military
>Commanders with ‘Boots on the Ground’ in Afghanistan the way former
>Secretary of Defense Les Aspin did during the Clinton
>Administration in Somalia (Blackhawk Down)- (He should have been held
>accountable for the MURDER of those Brave U.S. RANGERS. ) That horrible
>possibility coupled with the lack of attention placed on our Borders and
>Immigration will lead to the facilitation of our Enemies ability to bring
>THEIR Fight to our shores again.
Heh. As someone who has had to cross the Mexican and Canadian ones!)
numerous times, we're good on that front. The Canadian border could use
some beefing up, sure, but I drove Avenue Zero all along the border, and
really only found one place I could cross over without a real problem.
Assuming I want to crash my car/truck/van into a thick orchard of trees.
People CAN walk over the Canadian border illegally (in fact, I saw one
place where it's done regularly near Point Roberts). But you can't carry
much in without a caravan of people, which is MUCH more suspicious in
Canada than Mexico.
Anyways, the war we're fighting in Afghanistan, I do agree with. The
Taliban housed Bin Laden, and that safe haven allowed him to do 9/11.
Thing is, he's not there anymore (he's in Pakistan's Frontier area), and
we can't bomb the Taliban back into the stone age, cause the mountains of
Tora Bora are already there. I think that war is no longer a war, but a
"peacekeeping" phase (well, more like a Whack-A-Mole phase. There's no
more war left to do there...you simply have to put out the fires as they
come up, and if you happen to extinguish it while doing so, great).
>As to the ‘domestic fascism and trampling of the U.S. Constitution’ you
>allege, I feel your pain and invite you to read what Taxachusetts is
>doing!
>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/18/sjc_oks_secret_use_of_gps_devices/
>N.B. That Commonwealth is being run by Democrats. VERY SCARY!!!
>MPR
From that same article:
>“We hold that warrants for GPS monitoring of a vehicle may be issued,’’
>Cowin wrote. “The Commonwealth must establish, before a magistrate . . .
>that GPS monitoring of the vehicle will produce evidence’’ that a crime
>has been committed or will be committed in the near future.
[...]
>Leahy said the SJC ruling also means that police must persuade a judge
>they have probable cause before the GPS devices can be installed.
I don't see that tracking is an "Illegal Search and Seizure" issue. It's
a surveillance issue, and yeah, I have a problem with being tracked. That
said...there's a warrant. And the person must have probable cause. And
pursuade a judge. Due process. Due dilligence. It's when the warrant
says "Yeah, a guy lives in this area who might be a baddie...track
everyone's car on that block" that I've got a problem.
