Intercepting enemy communications
Does anyone seriously argue that President Lincoln needed warrants before allowing taps into Confederate telegraph communications?
There are several cases on the books that hold that the President has the inherent right to intercept enemy communications. The suggestion that the President should have to jump through hoops and miss al Qaeda contacts with its agents in the US is absurd. The whole FISA system is of questionable constitutionality and it clearly does not apply in a time of war.
It is also ridiculous to suggest that there is something improper about firing people who serve at the pleasure of the President. While some are huffing and puffing about the issue they cannot point to anything illegal or unethical about firing people. I think the case can be made that several other people should have been fired.
Iraq: Debate on the Baghdad Surge
3 July BBC - Iraq: Debate on the Baghdad Surge by Paul Reynolds.
Quote:
A debate is raging in Washington about whether the so-called surge of US forces in Iraq is likely to work.
Tension is growing between the political pressure to get results and the military imperative to give the plan time.
The critics include not only Democrats but Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who said in a speech on 25 June that the prospects that the surge strategy would succeed in the way envisaged by President Bush were "very limited"...
On the other side are proponents like commentator Frederick W Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, one of those who first proposed the plan.
He has written in the Weekly Standard magazine that Operation Phantom Thunder, as the operational phase of the surge is known, "is so far proceeding very well"...
Informing the debate is a key article in the Small Wars Journal, a discussion forum founded by former members of the US Marine Corps.
On the site's weblog, the Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser in Iraq, David Kilcullen, an Australian expert, has written about how the plan is supposed to work. He withholds judgment on whether it is succeeding or will do so. On that, he simply observes: "Time will tell."
He points out that major operations in Baghdad and the surrounding provinces started only on 15 June. "This is the end of the beginning: we are now starting to put things onto a viable long-term footing," he said...