Freep response to wiretapping from another forum

[cdb]

Progressive:
You would compromise the liberty of our citizens for a dubious claim of safety that can't be proven. Who's really got the tunnel vision here?

Freep:

Certainly I have tunnel vision. I dont want to be blown up. The government can track my phone calls. You can track them if you want. You can even listen in if you want. The 911 terrorists made hundreds of phone calls to each other during the planning of the attack. Perhaps if the government was aware of this they could have done something to stop them. Of course this might have infringed on their rights but would have save the lives of 3000 people. Would that have been worth it? For me, I'd say yes.


OMG, kool aid, please
The freeps are ok with this! Not realizing of course that phone calls were intercepted pre-911.... and interpreted the next day and had NO effect on preventing the event.

[wtmusic]

1. Ask if President Feingold can listen in, too nt

[rkc3]

14. Or President Hillary - from experience, two or three nutters have gone

ballistic when I suggested that option.

[rpgamerd00d]

2. Its not the govt job to save lives, its to protect the Constitution, which

in turn, guarentees our safety.

You CANNOT protect the Constitution by violating the Constitution!!

What dumbasses.

[treestar]

19. Exactly. This is the kool-aid. Whenever Bush says his job is

to protect us - his responsibility - well you know he is going to demand the "tools" he needs to carry out his "responsibility."

The Presidential Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.


Notice nothing about protecting individual Americans. Not even the physical land mass, when you come down to it.

[Sgent]

3. 10 to nothing

Fiengold doesn't bat an eye...

Ask what he would think of Hillary listening in.

[MindPilot]

4. Ask him why the government seemed to have no problem

with someone showing up at a flight school and wanting to learn how to fly and airliner but not how to land it.

[Postman]

5. I thought the rightwing was the "anti-gubmint" crowd....

you know, the ones that are going to be taking your guns away...

Its okay if they violate the 4th amendment though I guess.

What phonies.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

17. Only when Dems are in power.

[NightOwwl]

6. Hey, we don't need that silly old Consitution.

It's just a piece of paper. Besides, those old farts who wrote it lived in a post-9/11 world.

[ixion]

7. and had this happened under Clinton

I wonder if this person would be so understanding... ya think?

[Nimrod2005]

8. Don't we now have 100's of thousands of pages to Arabic shit we can't

translate? Of course, it could any number of languages too...

[bleedingheart]

9. The freeps secretly desire a dictator to control the country

they don't like to think for themselves and they think life would be far easier with a dictator..

[htuttle]

10. What a wimp! What a scaredy cat!

Man oh man, I grew up under the shadow of thousands of Soviet warheads pointed at me. Global annihilation was a very real possibility. Did we have to compromise the Bill of Rights so egregiously back then? No. (though it was certainly violated from time to time, at least it got lip service).

When did Americans lose their nerve like this? Why don't these panicking 'conservatives' just stay in bed in a fetal position and leave the business of running things to people with some backbone!!!

Boo!

[YOY]

16. Just what I was thinking: What a 'tough-guy' sissy

Take away all my rights, just don't let the minute chance of someone 'blowing me up' happen.

You take a risk every time you walk out the door and could die in a auto accident, have a heart attack, or have some other unforeseable accident take your life, but you're afraid of Osama blowing your stupid sheep ass up.

What a wussy.

[Atman]

11. "another forum" I was lurking in knew nothing about Watergate II

Didn't even know why the sex scandal was called "Watergate." Told all the crazy lefties to get their heads out of the seventies until someone pointed out to him that it actually occurred at The Watergate. Oh. Then they got into a row with a mole about how "NO ONE" knew about this "scandal" and when the guy posted several links to stories about it, they, of course, then switched to ridiculing the sources. When they started getting pissed off at being proven wrong and were called on it, they switched to Rush Limbaugh mode..."we don't get angry, this is only entertainment." Yup. When slapped in the face with facts, just switch to "this is just for entertainment."

And since we know they're lurking here, I am sure it will only be about thirty seconds before they accuse ME of being that mole just because I mention the thread here. But it wasn't/isn't, me, I assure you. I just found the exchange hysterical. As in, "these lunatics are hysterical," not funny.

It always amazes me to read shit by people take such pride in not knowing what is going on in the real world. If it ain't on Fox, it ain't news. Since virtually no one can support Bush anymore, they've just taken to calling every publication a "leftist" rag. Fox and the Limbaugh letter are the only sources of "facts" for these clowns.

[electropop]

12. But the government did know Al Qaeda was plotting 9/11.

They had Moussaoui; they had the August 6th PDB "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US;" they had thousands of wiretapped conversations which they hadn't even translated yet. What they didn't have was any desire to stop 9/11 from happening. Adding wiretaps against innocent Americans wouldn't have changed their plan to let the PNAC "Pearl Harbor" happen. Oh, and by the way, Bush had already ordered the unwarranted wiretaps before 9/11. So he was already using this "tool" and it was useless because this "tool" is a tool for finding and disappearing dissenters, not a tool against terrorists.

[LSK]

13. who wants to bet the Freep lives in the middle of Kansas

Or somewhere else that is not near any targets?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. "The 911 terrorists made hundreds of phone calls to each other....

...during the planning of the attack. Perhaps if the government was aware of this they could have done something to stop them."?

Hmmmm. Let's see if that freeper's head will explode, shall we?

Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI
Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
April 19, 2002
<http://www.nsa.gov/history/index.cfm>

QUOTE:

"While here, the hijackers did all they could to stay below our radar. They contacted no known terrorist sympathizers. They committed no egregious crimes. They dressed and acted like Americans, shopping and eating at places like Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut, blending into the woodwork all the while. When four got speeding tickets in the days leading up to September 11th, they remained calm and aroused no suspicion. Since none were known terrorists, law enforcement had no reason to question or detain them.

The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot. The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind. They used hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones, often with prepaid calling cards that are extremely difficult to trace. And they made sure that all the money sent to them to fund their attacks was wired in small amounts to avoid detection."

[underpants]

22. Excellent post

Well done. The wiretapping would have to have struck the head of a pin with lightning to catch them from their phonecalls.

I also notice that the original comment assumes that none of this happened under W's watch---in other word this is a blame Clinton thing.

[cantstandbush]

25. What's the link so we can remind this Freep of the pre-9/11 wire taps? n/

[Roland99]

18. But eavesdrop or spy on the Minutemen and it's "Oh, HELL no!"

[Ian David]

21. The Minutemen?

You mean The MinuteKlan?

Or perhaps The North Amercian Minuteman Border Legionaires Association (NAMBLA)?

[Roland99]

24. heh heh

[Ian David]

20. It's not just the content of their calls, but WHO they speak to

Are they sure that none of their "known associates" is actually a terrorist or a "person of interest?"

Do they think Liberals are "dangerous" or "treasonous"?

Do they have any Liberal friends or associates or acquaintances they communicate with regularly? What if the government takes an interest in one of their "associates?"

What if one of their friends is the next Olympic Park Bomber, or perhaps one of their acquaintances is caught with "bomb-making materials" or is labeled a "known associate" of a terror suspect?

What they need to ask themselves is not, "Do I have anything to hide," but instead they should be asking, "Is it possible that someone I associate with could be involved in something shady, and am I willing to spend five years being tortured in Gitmo without a lawyer until the 'misunderstanding' is cleared-up?"

With that in mind, just in case anybody here on DU is planning a violent act-- please don't do it. Violence is bad, m'kay? Don't be violent, m'kay?

But if I can't talk you out of it-- or if you are wrongly accused of planning or engaging in a violent act-- then please be in close, regular contact with one or more Backwash Republicans who still support Bush and his illegal wiretaps.

Guilty or not, be sure to implicate one of Bush's remaining 31% if/when you're arrested. Those are the names you should give-up under torture. Guilty or not, have names to give the authorities, and make sure those names belong to Bush supporters.

If you are planning a violent or illegal act, and I can't convince you not to do it, (violence and lawbreaking are bad, m'kay?) then now is the time to make close friends with the Backwash Republicans and to join their organizations. Leave cryptic messages on the answering machines of random GOP donors. Establish a web of communications and contacts and associations with the Bushies.

[Johonny]

23. Exactly how many people want to be blown up

I didn't think wire tapping was about if or not we were all going to blow up but if or not we were going to follow the law on wire tapping a phone. No one is arguing that wire taps should not be allowed. That’s a fringe position that isn’t held by a vast majority of Americans. It's is a procedure for wire taps. If the laws need fixing a law bidding citizen fixes the laws and not willfully ignore it. By ignoring the laws of the US Bush is encouraging law breaking, not discouraging it.