Of Foiled Terrorists And Immune Telecoms
Fox News has helpfully provided us with a list of all the terrorist plots our government has thwarted since 9/11/01. What they failed to give is a fair estimate of the subset that would not have been discovered without unlawful domestic surveillance.
posted by QueensGuy @ 3:29 PM
7 Comments:
As long as we're making unfair assumptions, we might as well note they've also failed to give us all the unknown terror attacks that were deterred by surveillance.
You are correct that it is theoretically possible that Tom Clancy-esque secret rescues from terrorism happens all the time by means of grabbing all these calls. I'm just deeply skeptical that an administration that is so publicly self-congratulatory with their every success in all other areas could resist the urge to say "see, we told you, this is what your sacrifice of civil liberties has bought you!" instead of nobly suffering in silence.
Self-congratulatory? They don't even want to talk about it--their hand has been forced by politicians who want to stop the program by claiming it's a huge sacrifice of civil liberties for little gain, when the truth is the opposite. I guess you'd rather have the Bush people roll over and give up on programs they think are important.
I'm not saying they've been self-congratulatory about this. Clearly they haven't.
I'm saying they've been self-congratulatory in many other areas whenever they've had even limited success.
We're presented with two choices here: (a) they've got nothing to brag about; and (b) they've got lots to brag about but are concerned with operational security so are suffering slings and arrows in silence. I'm saying that the lack of evidence in the public cases, combined with their braggadocio on unrelated topics, leads me to suspect (a) is more likely. You believe (b) is more likely, but have not said why.
Oh, and the only thing they've been asked to "roll over" on is retroactive immunity for telecom companies. Nothing more and nothing less.
On what basis should we trust that the Bush administration has used its powers to violate civil liberties wisely? Where is the evidence of competence?
We've seen the plots that they've foiled, but since you don't accept that as evidence, apparently it's not possible to have evidence.
Now I want evidence of where they actually violated anyone's civil liberties?
Post a Comment
<< Home