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May

13

Can We Connect What We Don’t Collect?

Posted By: 'Okie' | 11:56 am — 5/13/2006 | Comments Off See comments below:

Yesterday Hugh Hewitt asked the big question:

Are there jihadists in America plotting to kill thousands of Americans in attacks similar to those of 9/11?

He then goes on to provide example after example of Democrats and those of the Left that not only don’t have an answer, but don’t even seem to get it at all? It’s like they’ve all taken some kind of “denial drug” and no longer remember that 9/11 ever happened. While the majority of Americans seem to have a 9/12 level of awareness, the hard-Left is stuck on 9/10 and determined to stay there, come hell or another Osama attack. Here’s Hugh’s take on Sen. Patrick Leahy’s statement on Thursday.

And here is Patrick Leahy, senior member of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday:

    Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida? If that’s the case, we’ve really failed in any kind of a war on terror.

This may be the best quote from a Democrat on the war ever, demonstrating as it does in a single sound byte the astonishing combination of ignorance, hyperbole and partisanship that has rendered the Democratic Party unfit for a management role in the defense of the country. Leahy’s immediate condemnation of the necessity of information gathering of the sort done in this program telegraphs what will happen if Dems get control of either the House or the Senate: The left will once again assume that the biggest danger in the world is from America’s government, and immediately set about restraining it in the war on terror. [emph. mine]

You really should go and read the entire piece. Just to make it clear that this is a problem not just for the political Left but also, if not especially the Left-biased MSM, Hugh blasts the Washington Post and CNN’s Jack Cafferty — the former for its “willful refusal to understand the obvious” and the latter for being “[t]he most unhinged of the many unhinged commentators”. Speaking of which, I just finished looking at good ol’ Timmy Rutten’s regular Saturday column in the LA Times where he states about the NSA phone-call record collection — Public has to make the call. Of course, as usual, while praising the MSM for its lack of bias and castigating the New Media for indulging in its own, in my opinion, he widely misses the mark. And, like Leahy and Cafferty, is stuck in a pre-9/11 mindset — haunted by the golden memories of Watergate and the takedown of an American President by a couple of reporters.

Taken together, this sequence of reports [how the CIA operates a network of secret prisons in which people are tortured, the New York Times' documentation of the NSA's conduct of domestic wiretaps without warrants and the Los Angeles Times' revelations of how the country's intelligence agents allowed themselves to be duped and manipulated by an Iraqi defector] amounts to something that American newspapers never before have provided their readers in a time of armed conflict — as full as possible a contemporaneous account of how this nation’s government is prosecuting its struggles in secret, as well as on the battlefield.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that he just endorsed the exposure of classified intelligence and covert ops in wartime. Can you imagine what would have happened to reporters if they had exposed the Allies breaking of the German and Japanese codes during WWII, or had alerted the world about the details of D-Day before it happened? I still don’t understand why these Leftist MSMers believe that they should have the option to de-classify information deemed to require secrecy by our government in a time of war. But, sure I do — they do not trust our government, they do not trust our leaders, they do not trust our Constitution — they only trust the power of their own voice, collective or otherwise. Sheesh! Shades of the Sixties! But let’s let ol’ Tim reel out a bit more rope:

It is worth considering, moreover, that only newspapers have the will, resources and venues in which this sort of journalism can be accomplished on readers’ behalf. To an extent too little discussed, the future of the news media is the future of American democracy.

Myopic — thy name is Tim Rutten. Those brave MSMers may go to jail to protect a source, but they take every opportunity to discredit, minimize or outright destroy the very people and institutions that actually are charged with the protection of the people of the United States. Dan Rather, reporting obviously “forged” documents as fact in the run up to the “04 election was the MSM’s idea of how to protect the future of American democracy? Wholesale discrediting of the Swift Boat Vets in all the major newspapers was considered fairness on readers’ behalf? Destroying the NSA wiretapping program on calls coming into the country by suspected Al Qaeda members by exposing it to the world, making it useless, helps to secure the future of American democracy? Arrrrgh!

After taking a shot at the center-right Blogosphere, and talk-radio (although not by name this time) .

More interesting yet is the way in which these commentators’ worldview has slipped unexamined into the currents of the mainstream. Because their own motives are wholly partisan, they assume that everyone else doing journalism is similarly inclined. Thus, USA Today’s Cauley, like her colleagues at other major newspapers, must have written this story out of a desire to injure the Bush administration or frustrate its policies (…)

Like, yeah! Then he discusses Thursday’s Washington Post/ABC News snap poll that seems to indicate that MOST Americans are in favor of the NSA’s phone-call collection program:

A slightly larger majority–66 percent–said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats “even if it intrudes on privacy.” Three in 10–31 percent–said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Half–51 percent–approved of the way President Bush was handling privacy matters.

Admittedly, the poll’s sample was a small one, but as the Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal reports:

However, the findings are generally consistent with previous polling on the NSA domestic eavesdropping. It is also worth remembering that the brief upward movement in President Bush’s job approval rating coincided with the disclosure of the stories on NSA wiretaps in January.

So, what does our good fellow Rutten take from his examination of this poll data?

At the same time, the Post reported, 56% of those polled said “it was appropriate for the news media to have disclosed the existence of this secret government program.” That’s an interesting finding to stack up against the commentators who allege that USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times were “unpatriotic” when they published stories on the administration’s covert activities and spying and that the reporters involved ought to be charged with “espionage.”

Whatever its absolute limitations, the Post/ABC poll suggests that the public is in the process of making up its own mind, but wants the information to do that. A random sample of ordinary Americans, in other words, places a higher value on a free press than do the lock-step partisans in the chattering class.

Well, it’s one thing to announce that the government is collecting already existing data from companies that already store that same data to use in a non-invasive manner to try and find evidence of terrorist activities — so that warrants can be obtained to facilitate more thorough investigations to stop the next major terror attack — and it’s another thing altogether to expose an ongoing/effective program of surveillance on incoming Al Qaeda communications to those already inside the U.S. That’s what the lock-step partisans in the chattering class have been so worked up about. Why can’t those like Leahy, Cafferty and Rutten understand? Hard to see much when you’re stuck gazing at your own navel!

Consider James Lilek’s statement made on Hewitt’s show the other day, as transcribed by Radioblogger: “They [MSM & those on the Left] want us to connect the dots, they don’t want us to collect the dots.” Too true, and sounds like evidence of insanity to me — Maybe this post actually belongs under Just Plain Nuts!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 11:56 am and is filed under Fever Swamp Madness, NSA Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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