Saturday, December 17, 2005
Less than Loyal Opposition
Let's get down to basics. Here is a situation in law enforcement I have seen; it involves confidential informants. Usually drug cases and vice or narcotic cops have them, but the police force in general develops snitch networks of criminals and wannabes who will sell to the officers information of criminal activity the snitches have participated in or seen from the sidelines. (I told you this was basic). The individual cop takes the information, puts it in his or her affidavit to support a search or arrest warrant. The cop identifies the person witnessing the crime only as a confidential informant ("CI") who is known to the officer and who has provided reliable information in the past. That's the bare bones necessary for a judge to sign the warrant and allow the search or arrest.
Once the case goes to court, the defense attorney attempts to get a different judge to order the cop to reveal the identity of the CI. The attorney alleges something wrong with the warrant that only examination of the CI can get to the bottom of. Usually the judges do not order such identification, but once in a while they do. The cop then says I'm not giving up (burning) my CI and we prosecutors have to dismiss the case to protect the CI.
Something similar happens when the terrorists are prosecuted in federal court. Through the disclosure of evidence and witnesses through the discovery process, the terrorists can learn a lot about the sources and methods through which they were detected and captured. So criminal indictment of terrorists is a bad idea. Either they learn how to avoid capture and our sources (snitches--CIs) are put in danger, or the case has to be dismissed. The Clinton administration in particular insisted on treating terrorism as crime (rather than as war by different means) and to protect the CIs of the spies (alphabet soup organizations like the CIA, NSA and the like) when the FBI brought a case through the justice department, a wall (Jamie Gorelick's wall) was put up between the spies and the federal cops and prosecutors so the spies' sources and methods weren't revealed, and the CIs weren't burned. Of course the wall blinds the feds to what's coming at us from overseas and thousands of our citizens can die as a result of the purposeful blindness, like they did on September 11, 2001.
Another, better way to handle overseas terrorists coming here to kill us is to treat it like war with either incommunicado incarceration or military tribunals with no harmful discovery for the captured terrorists and then the wall is no longer necessary. The wall was pierced by the USA PATRIOT Act, and we could, through the Act, do against the terrorists the exact same things the FBI does every week against the Mafia. But because of some fundamental ignorance, the Defeatocrats have voted yesterday en masse in the Senate not to renew the sun-setting PATRIOT Act and thus necesarily to rebuild the wall and blind the FBI to what the spies know. I, for one, think this is stupid.
On the Fourth Estate/Fifth Column front, the New York Times is leaking highly sensitive classified material about our efforts to discover other terrorist plots against us. Now the terrorists know that we are intercepting their calls to their operatives here in America and they can seek out other methods of communication. Way to help out the effort, NYT. Good show. Our President has talked about this disloyal act without really mincing his words here. (h/t Little Green Footballs)
Almost daily the leadership of the Defeatocrats are asking for detailed plans from our President about the war in Iraq. Here's an example from history that I believe reveals the utter stupidity of asking for that. In May, 1944, there were no Republicans asking President Roosevelt for the detailed plans of the war--when precisely would we be invading Europe, where would we land, with how many troops, etc.? The reason Repuclicans never asked for that information is because the Germans would have used it to prepare and to defeat us. The Republicans in 1944 were the loyal opposition. If you, for example, talk about which troops are to be pulled out of Iraq, by this certain date, you give away for free intelligence which the terrorist (AKA insurgents) would otherwise have to work for or do without. They can adapt to the changing situation with foreknowledge of our plans and make things worse for our troops and ultimately for our national interests.
I have been underwhelmed by the intellectual ability to grasp of the situation by the Democrat leadership such as Dean, Pelosi, Reid and Kerry. Either they are too stupid to realize that you do not reveal your warplans to the enemy or they want us to fail. There doesn't appear to be another explanation for their actions. Either way, the Democrats can simply not be trusted with the reins of power during this very difficult war. I have thought and thought and decided that they are not merely stupid (although they are pretty stupid), but that they, at least at some level, want us to fail in Iraq and in the general war against militant Islamicists, or at least they are in reckless disregard of that possibility. They are, therefore, the less than loyal opposition.
Major support for this thesis is contained in the vote yesterday of a non-binding resolution in the House calling for Victory in Iraq. 150 or so Defeatocrats (the 109 who voted against it and the 40 or so who merely said present during the roll call) could not vote in favor of that resolution. They could not vote for Victory in Iraq. What else are we to call them?
Once the case goes to court, the defense attorney attempts to get a different judge to order the cop to reveal the identity of the CI. The attorney alleges something wrong with the warrant that only examination of the CI can get to the bottom of. Usually the judges do not order such identification, but once in a while they do. The cop then says I'm not giving up (burning) my CI and we prosecutors have to dismiss the case to protect the CI.
Something similar happens when the terrorists are prosecuted in federal court. Through the disclosure of evidence and witnesses through the discovery process, the terrorists can learn a lot about the sources and methods through which they were detected and captured. So criminal indictment of terrorists is a bad idea. Either they learn how to avoid capture and our sources (snitches--CIs) are put in danger, or the case has to be dismissed. The Clinton administration in particular insisted on treating terrorism as crime (rather than as war by different means) and to protect the CIs of the spies (alphabet soup organizations like the CIA, NSA and the like) when the FBI brought a case through the justice department, a wall (Jamie Gorelick's wall) was put up between the spies and the federal cops and prosecutors so the spies' sources and methods weren't revealed, and the CIs weren't burned. Of course the wall blinds the feds to what's coming at us from overseas and thousands of our citizens can die as a result of the purposeful blindness, like they did on September 11, 2001.
Another, better way to handle overseas terrorists coming here to kill us is to treat it like war with either incommunicado incarceration or military tribunals with no harmful discovery for the captured terrorists and then the wall is no longer necessary. The wall was pierced by the USA PATRIOT Act, and we could, through the Act, do against the terrorists the exact same things the FBI does every week against the Mafia. But because of some fundamental ignorance, the Defeatocrats have voted yesterday en masse in the Senate not to renew the sun-setting PATRIOT Act and thus necesarily to rebuild the wall and blind the FBI to what the spies know. I, for one, think this is stupid.
On the Fourth Estate/Fifth Column front, the New York Times is leaking highly sensitive classified material about our efforts to discover other terrorist plots against us. Now the terrorists know that we are intercepting their calls to their operatives here in America and they can seek out other methods of communication. Way to help out the effort, NYT. Good show. Our President has talked about this disloyal act without really mincing his words here. (h/t Little Green Footballs)
Almost daily the leadership of the Defeatocrats are asking for detailed plans from our President about the war in Iraq. Here's an example from history that I believe reveals the utter stupidity of asking for that. In May, 1944, there were no Republicans asking President Roosevelt for the detailed plans of the war--when precisely would we be invading Europe, where would we land, with how many troops, etc.? The reason Repuclicans never asked for that information is because the Germans would have used it to prepare and to defeat us. The Republicans in 1944 were the loyal opposition. If you, for example, talk about which troops are to be pulled out of Iraq, by this certain date, you give away for free intelligence which the terrorist (AKA insurgents) would otherwise have to work for or do without. They can adapt to the changing situation with foreknowledge of our plans and make things worse for our troops and ultimately for our national interests.
I have been underwhelmed by the intellectual ability to grasp of the situation by the Democrat leadership such as Dean, Pelosi, Reid and Kerry. Either they are too stupid to realize that you do not reveal your warplans to the enemy or they want us to fail. There doesn't appear to be another explanation for their actions. Either way, the Democrats can simply not be trusted with the reins of power during this very difficult war. I have thought and thought and decided that they are not merely stupid (although they are pretty stupid), but that they, at least at some level, want us to fail in Iraq and in the general war against militant Islamicists, or at least they are in reckless disregard of that possibility. They are, therefore, the less than loyal opposition.
Major support for this thesis is contained in the vote yesterday of a non-binding resolution in the House calling for Victory in Iraq. 150 or so Defeatocrats (the 109 who voted against it and the 40 or so who merely said present during the roll call) could not vote in favor of that resolution. They could not vote for Victory in Iraq. What else are we to call them?
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 12:47 PM 
