Intelligence Powers

Today's NY Times reports: "The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism."

Comments

[Jeff]

Shocking!

Massive state expansion of power being abused?

No way!

Unintended consequences from intentional statist social intervention?

Couldn't be!

I'm agog.

[Kevin Carson]

Unintended, hell!

Just wait'll you see the draft legislation Ashcroft pulls out of his desk drawer after the next Reichstag Fire (er, terrorist attack).

[Mark S.]

Hysteria! Hysteria, I tell you! This is nothing more than hysteria created the "American Communist Libeler's Union" to try to take away the necessary tools the Bush Administration needs to fight terrorism! Without the PATRIOT Act, we leave ourselves vulnerable from those dirty Muslims who want to kill our good American men, rape our good American women, and sell pot to our good American children!

All you want is to see the Islamist forces destroy this righteous Christian, nation... you... you terrorist... you criminal... you liberal... you homosexual... you TRAITOR!!!

[joe]

Unintended my butt! The expansion of police powers in this bill have been on the wish lists of a subculture of Washington elites for years, and had been rejected by policymakers during saner times. 9/11 created the political atmosphere to make these pipe dreams a reality.

Remind you of any other major initiatives by this administration?

[Baal]

You're too late, you puny mortals! My minion Ashcroft has done his work too well to be undone now! Tremble in fear at my coming!

[Phil]

I personally feel far more threatened by Herr Ashkroft and Der Bushies than I do by Osama & the Taliban. Someone remind me how they are different.

Um, one of them killed 3,000+ Americans on 9/11 and in other terrorist incidents around the world, and the others will not have jobs in Washington in a year? Just a guess.

Asshole.

[Frenk]

Where are all of the Ashcroft / PATRIOT Act defenders now?

Personally, I am waiting for Michelle Malkin's next BS defense ("chicken little! chicken little!") of the Act, which is now used -- as intended -- to reduce the rights and privacy of Americans with no connection to terrorism.

Heck! Critics of the Bush administration best watch their behavior, or the information gained under the PATRIOT Act will be leaked to major newpapers and your mom by Karl Rove.

[Baal, desperately in need of s]

All libertarians must tremble at my shocking, awesome powers! Beware, lest my minions Ashcroft and Rove set about scouring the web to learn all your dirty little secrets! Woe unto them should they fail me! For if they do I shall release the terror that is your mommy

[thoreau]

As to theories that 9/11 was a "Reichstag fire":

I admit, it's really tempting at times to believe that 9/11 was perpetrated at the behest of people in the government. However, I still have just enough distrust for the gov't to believe that the government would be incapable of pulling off something like 9/11 without getting caught:

1) They'd order the boxcutter knives from some contractor who sells them at 5x retail value because the contractor donated to a prominent Congressman's campaign.

2) Some idiot would do a background check on Mohammed Atta to see if he can be trusted with information on classified operations (e.g. a "wag the dog" terrorist attack) and write a bunch of memos advising that Atta is untrustworthy. (Duh! He's a terrorist!) The paper trail would be dug up by some blogger.

3) Another idiot would order the wrong type of visa for some of the hijackers, so half of them would be stranded in another country and the hijacking crews would be short-staffed.

4) To comply with anti-discrimination laws, the gov't would select for pilot training a veteran mujahedeen fighter who lost both arms and one eye when wounded in battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan 20 years ago.

5) Some idiot in Washington would book all 4 terrorists with pilot training for the same flight, so the other 3 flights would have no pilot to guide them to their targets.

[Marten Barck]

Kevin Carson's remark, "...after the next Reichstag Fire (er, terrorist attack).", is too loony too comment, but perhaps it provides the backdrop for Mark S.'s sarcastic comments about the threat of Islamist terrorism?
If not it seems naive in the extreme to ironize over the fact that Islamist terrorists aim to kill Americans.
If the choice is between this tupsy-turvy view of the world and PATRIOT/Bush, I'd choose the latter anyday.

[Anonymous]

Yes, terrorists killed 3000 people on 9/11. Yes, it was a terrible thing, and yes we need to react to it appropriately. Since then, we've killed 20 times that many people in automobile accidents,and more than that through bad lifestyle choices.

A relative handful of terrorists cannot destroy this country. We can do it for them by throwing away everything that makes this country worth living in, trying to make ourselves "secure".

[R C Dean]

Kevin is right about one thing - the PATRIOT Act had very little in it that wasn't on Janet Reno's wish list. Neither party has a monopoly on civil liberties virtue.

[Kevin Carson]

LOL, thoreau. That's a good segue to my response to joe.

joe,

Coyness aside, I have to admit that some of that was hyperbole. I don't think the U.S. government could actively organize something like 9-11 because it would have required coordination between too many people and agencies, and somebody would have either screwed up or spilled the beans. At least I hope--otherwise, it would be pretty nerve-wracking anticipating the inevitable October Surprise next year and the subsequent roundup of dissidents.

Deliberate failure to forestall an anticipated attack, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. Stinnett made a pretty good case in "Day of Deceit" that FDR did just that in deliberately failing to prevent Pearl Harbor. To carry out such a "conspiracy of inaction" requires only a handful of gatekeepers in key positions, whose main m.o. is to let stuff sit in their in-boxes a few days too long. I won't go so far as to say that 9-11 was *likely* an example of this phenomenon; but I think there is a good chance it was. I certainly don't believe in any myth of "American exceptionalism" according to which it's an outrage to suggest that "our leaders" are capable of the same mendacity and libido dominandi as those of lesser nations.

[thoreau]

Kevin-

I like your point about deliberate action vs. deliberate inaction.

I don't know enough to say whether Pearl Harbor was in fact a case of deliberate inaction, but I've heard the theory put forward. Interestingly, I've occasionally heard people suggest that deliberate inaction on Pearl Harbor was a necessary sacrifice to get the public to support ridding the world of Nazism. I'm not defending that theory, but I find it interesting that somebody might actually praise dereliction of duty if indeed it happened.

Who knows? Maybe some day a "deliberate inaction" theory of 9/11 will be put forward in the mainstream, but spun as a sacrifice that the gov't made to muster the public support necessary for ridding the world of Islamic fundamentalism.

Then again, maybe this is all just a bunch of paranoia.

[Mark S.]

Marten: My "sarcastic" remarks about the "threat" of Islamic terrorism is due large in part to the fact that it's not as much of a threat as the government would have us imagine. Since 9-11 we've been dogged with "terror alerts" and color-coded warnings and for what? I got a feeling that Osama shot his wad on 9-11 and despite all the video-taped bluster, he doesn't really have anything to back it up with.

But in your attempts to paint crictics of Patriot as paranoid kooks, you don't answer the NYT's article that points out that it's not just being used for the imagined hobgoblin of terrorism as the adminstration promised. Then again, when you've got ads from ONDCP and Partnership For A Freedom Free America proclaiming that anyone who smokes a joint is in league with Al Quedia, it shouldn't surprise me.

After all, only the "guilty" have anything to fear, right?

[Mark S.]

"Baal?" It seems we have a Goa'uld System Lord on Hit & Run.

"Jaffa, Kree!"

[joe]

Kevin, I have big problems with the Clinton admin's record on civil liberties, but I have to call you on a couple of things...

The Waco seige was already underway when Reno came into office. The decision to attack was make below her in the chain of command. Her failure was to trust the FBI's intelligence (in both senses), and figure that they must know what they're doing. A bad enough indictment, but the appellation "Butche of Waco" is an implicit comparison to Klaus Barbie, who deliberately coordinated the enslavement and execution of thousands of innocent people. OKing an assault to end a lenghthy, dangerous hostage situation, however poor the judgement, is not in the same league.

Also, you know the history of the Reichstag fire: that is was lit by a Dutch communist, but that the Nazis has secretly assisted the operation, including putting barrels of fuel in the building to make sure the structure was destroyed. Stop being coy: are you actully suggesting that the federal government has assisted in terrorist attacks against Americans? Assisting is a long way from "taking advantage of."

[John Q.]

I'm pretty sure most of the stuff in USA Patriot was previously proposed by Chuck Schumer, on behalf of Reno's jackboot state. The unholy alliance between him, Soccer Mommie Dearest Dianne Feinstein, and the mormonoid robot Orrin Hatch, shows that this is not a partisan issue.

LOL. Kevin, you're on a roll today. 🙂

[mark]

I personally feel far more threatened by Herr Ashkroft and Der Bushies than I do by Osama & the Taliban. Someone remind me how they are different. One is a group of ultra rightwing concervatives bent on attempting to control my behaviors and the other is has high ranking members hiding in an undisclosed location?

[Jon H]

I wonder if Ashcroft will use the vaunted and essential powers of the Patriot act to investigate the Plame leak?

Nah.

Ridiculous Lucky Captain Rabbit King, USA Patriot Act is for the Youth!

[Kevin Carson]

thoreau,

Isn't that kind of what they're arguing about Iraq? "Well, maybe there aren't any WMD's, but that doesn't matter 'cause we needed to get rid of Saddam anyway." It's only a matter of time until some GOP flack is arguing that Bush was a hero for lying us into war against our will.

BTW, I heard Al Sharpton mocking that argument on C-SPAN: "That's like me saying, 'You've all got to get out of this hall right now because the ceiling's gonna fall in,' and then telling you "That's OK, you needed some fresh air anyway." I thought, it's also like saying "That guy didn't rape Tawana Brawley, but it's OK because we needed to raise consciousness about racism anyway."

[Marten Barck]

Mark S: "My "sarcastic" remarks about the "threat" of Islamic terrorism is due large in part to the fact that it's not as much of a threat as the government would have us imagine."

That's exactly my point. To say that after 9/11 is just mindboggling.

[joe]

To say that six months after 9/11 would have been mindboggling. But then, who would have guessed that there would not have been a single AQ operation pulled off in the US in the two years that followed? Hell, I was relieved when Dick Clark got all the way to New Years without being blown up back in 01.

[Kevin Carson]

joe,

I'm pretty sure most of the stuff in USA Patriot was previously proposed by Chuck Schumer, on behalf of Reno's jackboot state. The unholy alliance between him, Soccer Mommie Dearest Dianne Feinstein, and the mormonoid robot Orrin Hatch, shows that this is not a partisan issue. It's a battle between the mainstream of both parties and the remnant in both parties who haven't sold their souls to the devil.

During every administration for the last 20 years, the opposition has squealed about the threat to civil liberties, and then bent over and greased up when their own party got back in power. Under Reagan and Bush, it was Democrats who were afraid of Ed Meese et al's erosion of due process rights and escalation of the Drug War. Then the Butcher of Waco got in there, and it was only "antigovernment extremists" and "conspiracy nuts" who complained. Now we're under Holy John Ass-crap's Reign of Righteousness, and the Freepers don't have problem one with jackboots, as long as they're commanded by someone who handles snakes and speaks in tongues. Thank God there's a handful who haven't yet bent the knee to Baal, who resist invasions of our liberty regardless of what party is behind it.

[Baal's mom]

HOW DARE YOU MOCK MY SON'S MINIONS IN THIS FASHION!!! I WILL SEAR THE VERY FLESH FROM YOUR BONES AS PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR MISDEEDS!

[joe]

I don't buy the Pearl Harbor conspiracy, either. Imagine if 300 Japanese attack bombers were shot down by interceptors 1-3 miles away off the Hawaiian coast, and a Japanese aircraft carrier and several support vessels sunk in a counterattack. Would that have been any less effective in getting the American people to decide we needed to go to war?

[michael (in DC)]

Joe, Kevin,

I've also heard somewhere that FDR's first reaction, when told of the attack on Hawaii, was "No, no! You mean the Philippines!"...

I'm pretty sure the record is uncontroversial that many in the govt expected some sort of attack or provocation from the Japanese...and perhaps deliberately maneuvered events to provoke them. Whether they knew the where, when, and how, though, is a different question.

As to Bush and 9/11, there are certainly alot of questions--If you go to http://www.cooperativeresearch.org they've got some detailed timelines (pulled together from mainstream media) that point to outstanding questions about Bush & Co's activities before, during and after. Whether their nonstop obstructionism ever since points to incompetence, some level of complicity, or just pigheadedness is anybody's guess at this point.

[kevin]

Very informed and interesting comments! Greetings.

kevin

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