2006-03-02
Bush's Worlds Collide
Pat Buch, with another missive that'll enthuse Tom and Nadir. One think that I like about Pat Buch is that he doesn't employ silly semantics. For example, he opposes warrentless evesdropping on international communication, but he doesn't mis-lable this as "domestic" communication. The word "domestic" means "within a nation", whereas "international" means "involving more than one nation." Nadir's email to Fidel Castro is not a "domestic" email; nor is his call to Robert Mugabe a "domestic" call. As Nadir's phone bill will attest, that call is "international." A proper description of the contested Bush practice would be, "Unchecked international communications spying." I don't think that anybody really wants the US military or its intelligence agents to get a federal warrent before tapping calls between Iraq and the US, but we all want congressional officials to monitor the tapping, right? But please, no more refering to these communications as "domestic"; according to the dictionary, they are not.
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4 comments:
Pat Buchanan for PRESIDENT! No.
Secretary of State? No.
Deputy Secretary of state?
I don't know. He speaks sensibly on foreign policy, but is fruit loops on domestic issues.
Whatever. He makes some good points in this post.
paul, it's been showed over and over again that they spied on domestic messages. Don't make me dig up an article.
Tom: The conduct up for debate as best I can tell is bush spying on international communications involving one person in the US and one in a country with lots of islamic terrorists. I support that, as well as domestic spying without warrents, provided that there is congressional and judicial oversight. It appears that the behavior under debate -- warrentless spying on international comminications -- is occuring without any oversight. Warrents is not the only form of oversight; it's an extreme case of oversight.
Perhaps there needs to be a second debate about warrentless domestic spying. I've not heard that accused, only implied by headlines which always turn out to involve international warrentless spying.
Son, how are you going to call for warrantless spying with judicial oversight? The judges oversee by issuing warrants. Take away the warrants, and you take away the oversight.
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