The administration’s position is that the NSA surveillance program does not violate FISA because FISA authorizes surveillance authorized by other statute, and the AUMF authorizes the warrantless surveillance performed by the NSA. This position is controversial, and in my view possibly incorrect, but it’s certainly colorable, finding support in the Supreme Court’s Hamdi decision. Thus, there’s no reason to suppose that the administration asserts it other than in good faith, and no reason to conclude that Gonzales was testifying falsely.

John Hindraker (Power Line again), in A Liberal Speaks also takes a look at the “liberal” argument which seems to be the heart and soul of the case made by some participants in this thread. Excerpts:

Mr. Mullen took offense at my question, and responded:

No dumbshit. We want the president to spy on al queda, BUT we want him to follow the damned law too!

Oh, I’m sorry, is that too nuanced for you thick headed fools?

If Hillary Clinton were doing what Bush is doing you guys would be going ape-shit.

Respectlessly, Matt Mullen

Matt, like many other Democrats, admits that President Bush is doing the right thing. He agrees with the President’s decision to order the NSA to intercept international terrorist communications, including those with one end in the U.S. He wants the NSA to listen in on al Qaeda calls to the U.S., but he wants the President to “follow the damned law too!” As Matt no doubt knows, we have written extensively on the legal issues surrounding the NSA terrorist surveillance program. At least five federal appellate decisions stand for the proposition that the President has the constitutional authority under Article II to order warrantless surveillance for foreign intelligence gathering purposes. This means that the NSA program is legal. Matt offers no argument or authority to the contrary.

Presumably the “damned law” Matt wants NSA to comply with is FISA. But the Constitution, as well as FISA, authorizes the President to carry out electronic surveillance. As the FISA court of appeals wrote in 2002, if FISA tried to limit the President’s Article II power to conduct warrantless surveillance, it would be unconstitutional to that extent. Matt offers no comment on these legal principles. Probably he is unaware of them.

Section 109 of FISA also says that FISA does not apply where surveillance is “authorized by [another] statute.” The administration argues, supported by the Hamdi case, that Congress’s Authorizaton for the Use of Military Force authorizes intercepting enemy intelligence, which, like detaining enemy combatants, is a “fundamental and accepted incident of war.” If the administration is right, FISA does not come into play at all. Matt must know about this argument, since it has been widely reported, but he makes no attempt to rebut it.

There is more within each short article (they summarize detailed articles made by these writers and others) that is well worth reading for those who haven’t yet dug at least that deeply into the underlying arguments in the case. But the excerpts above suffice to make the basic point that as far as the legality is concerned there is ample room for argumentation on both sides of the issue and that the “lie” meme is just plain stupid and tossed out only by stupid, angry people.

Ahh, those were the days.

Those Canaan days we used to know
Where have they gone, where did they go?
Eh bien, raise your berets
To those Canaan days.

It’s funny but since we lost doug-jack
We’ve gone to the other extreme
Perhaps we all misjudged the lad
Perhaps he wasn’t quite that bad
And how we miss his entertaining dreams.

The North Vietnamese military was practically destroyed in the infamous Tet offensive. Giap was ready to fold his tent until he saw the traitorous American media reaction. US and allies won every major battle, in spite of the worst war-time SecDef of all time’s micro-management. South Vietnamese forces were conducting virtually all major ops on their own when the US Congress decided to discontinue all aid. That’s about as condensed as I can tell it. That failure of will was the beginning of troubles that we still feel the effects of today. Perception of America as a paper tiger has led our enemies to think we can be endlessly provoked without reacting effectively,

Did you support the Echelon program when Prez Clinton claimed constitutional authority?

“BDS sufferers, unfortunately for all of us, cannot seperate the office from the man.”

So I guess you would have supported this “program” if Al Gore or John Kerry were president.

I missed the following in your most recent post.

Just as American leaders in the past realized that covertly toppling governments and napalming villages in Vietnam did us no good in the war against communism

Umm… covertly toppling governments… Well, if one needs a government toppled one can do it covertly (as per Chile) or one can do it overtly. There are several ways to go about doing it overtly. We can openly supporting local movments who will do the actual fighting or whatever is required (Nicaragua) or direct invastion (Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq).

The “napalming villages” charge is a toss away that doesn’t deserve a response.

because these acts seemed to prove communist charges against us,

We cannot develop strategies by what “seems” to be or is perceived to be. Other people’s delusions and ignorance are no basis for strategy.

today’s leaders will eventually develop strategies that will more effectively isolate the enemy instead of ourselves

Got any examples of any recent leadership that has accomplished this isolation of our enemies? I’m struggling to understand how this is accomplished – you haven’t offered any suggestions for alternative ways to deal with the global war against jihadism, so perhaps I can draw them from examples of leaders who have accomplished what your are talking about.

…or they’ll be replaced with leaders who will.

And these might be?

We figured out what you believe on the first post.

The questions which some of us have asked were intended to explore why you believe it.

So its unfortunate that you find it preferable to repeat your initail talking points over and over. Yes, we get it, you think Iraq is like Vietnam. Now how about if you explain (1) why you think this and (2) what you think ought to be done. Please be specific in your answers.

Thanks for the link. Just a couple things that pop to mind while reading it.

First, it is from June of 2003. It doesn’t tell us much about what the “silent majority” thinks today. Not that I would expect the US to be beloved (the plain fact of the matter is that it never has been, call it the New York Yankees syndrome – loved or hated, not much in between).

Next thing that jumps to mind is:

The poll of more than 15,000 people in 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, conducted in May by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, also showed a significant loss of faith in two major international institutions created out of the ashes of World War II – the United Nations and NATO.

“The figures show that the publics – the European public and our public – are feeling that the ties that have bound us together for the last 50 years are weakening,” said Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state and chair of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. “I see this as very serious.”

Well, the world changes. It certainly isn’t the same world it was a half-century ago. Declining opinions, even in June of 2003, of the UN are well deserved. The UN earned every shred of it. As for NATO, well, it is an organization struggling to find a purpose. It doesn’t have much to do with Iraq in particular or waging war against jihadism in general.

As could be expected, this feeling is strongest in the Muslim world, where negative attitudes toward the United States have soared since the war on Iraq began March 20 with a wave of American air attacks over Baghdad.

The poll found that 83 percent of Turks now have an unfavorable opinion of the United States, up from 55 percent last summer.

Ummm…. notice the “up from 55%” part of that last sentence. And that is from what at the time was, what, one of the two or three Islamic allies we had. It doesn’t suggest there was ever much positive sentiment among Moslems for the US to draw upon.

Also note that this poll is from 3 months after the war began. As I said above it doesn’t reflect the current situation. For example,

The swing was even sharper in Indonesia, where Islamic radicalism has been rising since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

This hardly suggests that 9/11 gave the US any particular opportunity to cash in on some groundswell of sympathy from Indonesian moslems. Apparently they saw 9/11/01 as a good reason to get radical.

While 75 percent had a favorable opinion of the United States in 2000, 83 percent now have an unfavorable view. Similar levels of animosity hold sway in the Palestinian Authority and Jordan.

Anyway, with little or no change in US treatment of Indonesia events far away radically shifted Indonesian opinion of the US. Yet more recent events directly involving Indonesia and US actions toward it produce nothing close to that level of swing in “public opinion” (here’s the 6/05 Pew Poll, BTW. This suggests, to me at least, that Indonesian public opinion – and quite probably general “moslem” public opinion – of the US is disconnected from the realities of their lives.

What point is there in playing to public opinion that does not reflect any reality. They decided they didn’t like us when we went into Iraq and they aren’t going to change their minds much even when we come to their assistance.

As recent events (the Cartoon Wars) suggest, public opinion in Islamic nations is very sensitive to any perceived insult or threat, regardless of proximity or connection to any actual effect upon their lives, and very insensitive to any assistance regardless of the effect upon their lives.

You may wish US policy to be driven by Islamic public opinion but I fail to see the potential gain in doing so.

Now, back to your other points.

Statesmen and military leaders have always designed strategy with the “decent opinion of mankind” in mind. You can’t win an epic struggle such as the one we are engaged in against Islamic extremism without popular support.

A couple things here. You’d have a hard time backing up the first sentence there. There has been lip service paid to the “opinions of mankind” but it rarely shows up in actual military strategy. Hitler and his generals certainly didn’t give it more than passing thought. And they certainly didn’t give a rat’s patoot about the decent opinions of large swaths of mankind. British and US leadership gave such things some thought, but when push came to shove and the strategy called for massive bombing of the Third Reich…

As for the second sentence, please keep in mind that even the “favorable opinion” that some portions of some of the moslem population might once have held about the US, that doesn’t automagically equate to “popular support”. We are not going to have the “popular support” of the general moslem population in the war against jihadism until THEY decided to stop supporting jihadis. We cannot do anything to change their opinion.

The jihadis are helping out by showing their true stripes and killing no end of fellow moslems. So, maybe agressively defending ourselves and fighting the jihadis on their own turf is the best way to eventually gain moslem popular support. Show them what jihadism is really all about rather than leaving them to cheer attacks far away against infidels.