Reason #Umpteen Why They're Called The Treason Lobby

Want an update on the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program? Surprised that it actually still exists? I sure as hell was.

Not that there's much of it left, thanks to the !#$%^&* Democrats. Bowing to last November's [***AHEM***] election results, the Bush Administration caved and made the TSP subject to FISA court pre-approval. It has had depressingly predictable results:

This has turned out to be an enormous mistake that has unilaterally disarmed one of our best intelligence weapons in the war on terror. To understand why, keep in mind that we live in a world of fiber optics and packet-switching. A wiretap today doesn't mean the FBI must install a bug on Abdul Terrorist's phone in Peshawar. Information now follows the path of least resistance, wherever that may lead. And because the U.S. has among the world's most efficient networks, hundreds of millions of foreign calls are routed through the U.S.

That's right: If an al Qaeda operative in Quetta calls a fellow jihadi in Peshawar, that call may well travel through a U.S. network. This ought to be a big U.S. advantage in our "asymmetrical" conflict with terrorists. But it also means that, for the purposes of FISA, a foreign call that is routed through U.S. networks becomes a domestic call. So thanks to the obligation to abide by an outdated FISA statute, U.S. intelligence is now struggling even to tap the communications of foreign-based terrorists.

If this makes you furious, it gets worse.

Our understanding is that some FISA judges have been open to expediting warrants, as well as granting retroactive approval. But there are eleven judges in the FISA rotation, and some of them have been demanding that intelligence officials get permission in advance for wiretaps. This means missed opportunities and less effective intelligence. And it shows once again why the decisions of unaccountable judges shouldn't be allowed to supplant those of an elected Commander in Chief.

When the program began, certain U.S. telecom companies also cooperated with the National Security Agency. But they were sued once the program was exposed, and so some have ceased cooperating for fear of damaging liability claims. We found all of this hard to believe when we first heard it, but we've since confirmed the details with other high-level sources.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell more or less admitted the problem last week, albeit obliquely, when he told the Senate that "we're actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting." That's understating things. Our sources say the surveillance program is now at most one-third as effective as it once was.

As bad as that is, this is the kicker:

The Administration has introduced legislation to modernize FISA and to give immunity to telecom companies who cooperate in terrorist surveillance, but the Democrats have blocked the legislation.

Brother Hinderaker calls this "infuriating," and indeed it is. But what is chilling, at least to me, is his conclusion:

This....highlights the situation we currently face in Washington, where one party consistently puts its own political interests ahead of the national security of the United States.

If the Democrats' political interests truly are advanced by sabotaging the national security of the United States and recklessly endangering the lives of countless American civilians all of whom have been avowedly targeted for mass murder by our enemies, can America survive at all? And do we even deserve to?

UPDATE: BTW, according to a West Point terrorism study center report, 73% of [current Gitmo detainees] are a “demonstrated threat” to American or Coalition forces, and 95% are at the least a “potential threat,” including detainees who had played a supporting role in terrorist groups or had expressed a commitment to pursuing jihadist violence.

"Demonstrated threat" means at least one of the following criteria applies:

***Explicitly and without qualification supported or waged hostile activities against the U.S. or Coalition partners

***Fought for al Qaeda or the Taliban or associated forces

***Received training in an al Qaeda or Taliban training camp

***Received training in the use of combat weapons beyond small arms (grenades, rpg's, ied's, sniper rifles, etc.)

That's what the Dems want to turn loose in the civilian criminal justice system, where, as the Wall Street Journal points out, most, if not all of them, would be released because the military could not afford to open up classified intelligence to their (inevitably leftist) defense counsels' discovery motions.

None of this is disputable, and the Democrats damn well know it. Yet they continue to insist that Gitmo be emptied and enemy illegal combatants treated not as they deserve to be (summarily liquidated), legally should be (left to rot in Gitmo for the rest of their lives), or as they most definitely do not merit (as prisoners of war), but as regular civilian law-breakers no different from a pimp or a pickpocket, even though doing so will further endanger God knows how many American civilian lives.

Either the Donks are committing political suicide, or we're commiting collective national suicide. (via the Tank)