Homeland Security Roundup

Here are some of the week's headlines in this area:

FISA Fears Shielded 9/11 Plotters

Contrary to the claims of Bush Administration critics, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has seriously hampered U.S. counterterrorism efforts - and actually helped to shield at least two key 9/11 plotters from detection by U.S. law enforcement....

[Reagan-era Justice Department official Victoria] Toensing notes that the vaunted FISA law became the basis for former [Clinton] Deputy Attorney General Jamie
Gorelick's notorious wall of separation in 1995 - which prohibited intelligence agencies from sharing information on terrorists with U.S. law enforcement....

Toensing said that if intelligence agencies had been able to wiretap terrorists operating inside the U.S. as they do under the Bush program, "we could have detected the presence of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego, more than a year before they crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon."

Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush decisively reiterated this point in speeches this week as well as establishing beyond any argument the legality of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program.

That isn't slowing down the DisLoyal Opposition from dishonestly screeching otherwise, of course (though none of them has actually come out and called for the eavesdropping to be shut down, which the logic of their so-called argument would seem to demand), or agitating for another acts of suicidal insanity:

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down a provision of the Patriot Act that prevents foreigners who endorse terrorism from entering the U.S.

The details are almost irrelevant, aren't they?

Thank goodness there are some Republicans actively defending the Patriot Act, and the RNC is doing its part as well. Perhaps that's why even a typically skewed CBS/New York Times poll shows majority support for the NSA program and Patriot Act renewal.

And if all of the above wasn't sufficient, this story would seem to be the clincher (via CQ):

Colombia has dismantled a false passport ring with links to al-Qaida and Hamas militants, the acting attorney general said Thursday after authorities led dozens of simultaneous raids across five cities.

The gang allegedly supplied an unknown number of citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever stepping foot in the country.

An undisclosed number of those arrested are wanted for working with the al-Qaida terror network and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, said acting Attorney General Jorge Armando Otalora.

The counterfeit Colombian, Spanish, Portugese and German passports were used to enter the United States and Europe, he said.

Ed adds that three Iraqis traveled to Columbia in 2002 for the purpose of infiltrating the U.S. on Israeli passports supplied by Hamas and al Qaeda via this false passport ring.

Wanna connect the dots now? Between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Between al Qaeda and Hamas, the latter of whom is now Israel's new "partner in peace"? How about the most important connection of all:

The NSA program just went from an academic exercise to a practical application. The Colombians know that at least eight people snuck through on faked passports and are now in the United States. Do you suppose that an NSA program designed to check international calls might help locate these suspects - and perhaps help stop a planned attack on an American target?...

How does everyone feel about that international surveillance now? Sounds like a pretty damned good idea, doesn't it?

Indeed.

But please, do keep flogging this issue, my good Donk friends. Which is another way of saying, "Please, do keep slamming your collective ballsack repeatedly in a pneumatic press." Feel free to do so all the way through next November and beyond.

Please. I'm begging you.