tvnewslies.com and

loosechange.com

and a careful study of Professor Griffin’s paper – all 51 pages of it.

This analysis completely misses the larger and more important point:

FISA wasn’t stopping Bush from having a wiretap program. if he had wanted a wiretap program in September 2001, all he had to do was go to the rubber stamp FISA court with 3 days. He could have easily had one if he had wanted one, so the whole argument is a crock of the ususal shit.

The Republican frame is wiretap terrorists vs. protect civil rights. This si the frame that Bush used and the trap many are falling into. We must avoid this frame.

The accurate, progressive frame is: We all agree on wiretapping terrorists. The question about the wireless wiretaps is whether or not to have minimal checks and balances on the politicians in Washington to prevent them from abusing the program — not whether or not to wiretap terrorists.

Comment by John Kotlaba — February 1, 2006 @ 2:31 am

Actually another Bush wiretap spin, they were on Student Visas, and If I understand it Correctly, Im not a Lawyer by Trade, but they weren’t American Citizens therefore a Warrant was probably not even needed to Tap ‘Terrorists’ Students or those here illegaly.
But yes that only one of the Weldon reports from Congress, the 911 Commission report is well, read the link,,above for Weldon/ Lou Dobbs transcript..

“All along, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were living openly in the San Diego area, using their real names on their California driver’s licenses and rental agreements. Even more shocking, they had befriended and moved in with a prominent local Muslim leader, Abdussattar Shaikh, who, unbeknownst to them, was a long-time undercover FBI counterterrorism informant in regular contact with a terrorism case officer in the bureau’s San Diego office. According to Newsweek, it was such a close encounter that “on one occasion the [FBI] case agent called up the informant and was told he couldn’t talk because ‘Khalid’—a reference to al-Mihdhar—was in the room.”

————

So we couldn’t find them or wiretap them, but they were living with an FBI informant????

WASHINGTON, Nov 9, 2005 – Today, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, appeared on Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN) regarding his recent work on Able Danger – a Department of Defense planning effort to identify and target the linkages and relationships of Al-Qaeda worldwide. Below is a transcript of that interview.

[SEGMENT BEGINS]

DOBBS: New charges tonight. Charges of a massive cover-up by
members of our defense intelligence community. Congressman Curt
Weldon today called for a criminal investigation into what he
says, is the most important story of our lifetime.

Weldon says the army’s intelligence unit known as Able Danger,
identified the ringleaders of the 9/11 attacks more than a year
before September 11, but those warnings were ignored by the
Pentagon.

Weldon says the defense intelligence agency is now trying to
smear the reputation of Able Danger member Lieutenant Colonel
Anthony Shaffer, for speaking out about the scandal.

In addition to identifying the ringleaders of the 9/11 attacks,
Congressman Weldon says Able Danger warned defense officials
about terrorist activity in the Port of Aden in Yemen, two weeks
before that bombing of the U.S. the bombs of the U.S.S. Cole in
2000.

He also blasted the 9/11 Commission, calling them a
disappointment and a failure for not including that information
about Able Danger in its final report.