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Looks like Mr Iqbal was actually convicted of "providing material support to Hizballah, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization." Not just showing their material, as the NYTimes reported. http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3773
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401461.html
Apparently he was "supporting" them simply by promoting these broadcasts? Not sure how I feel on this one. If DVRs are questionable, simply because ads can be skipped, as ads are the only support for television broadcasting companies, how much is something like Mr Iqbal is doing, support?

revealed by whom?

Looks like mostly the Palestinian Media Watch and the Militant Islam Monitor.

No way. This is not about "national security" in the sense of busting terrorists and preventing catastrophic damage. It's about control, plain and simple. There are no credible threats. Is this, busting some loser ice cream man after paying a shady informant a quarter-million bucks (commonplace even while many Americans are jobless and starving), the best that they can do?

Sweeping powers like rampant warrantless wiretapping will always be abused. Why care if you're not up to anything? Surely you won't mind if I follow you around and read over your shoulder, or even follow your wife into the restroom to make sure that she's not doing anything illegal. Huh. You'd think that we would be better than to allow state-sponsored voyeurism. But it's for your own good - the terrorists and pedophiles are out to get you!

Lol.. OK so letting the bomb go off and killing millions of people is ok and we are still the good guys right? I say this not because of watching 24 or anything but because the first reported water boarding was supposedly done directly after 9/11 and only to people who were in a position to know of future attacks. The entire premise that another attack wasn't being planed is sort of pointless because we didn't know and feared one was coming.

Don't let Hollywood take something that could be very real and turn it into some abstract that tears your attention away from the issues at hand. I notices you didn't answer the question but offered some excuse to ignore it instead. The very real fact is that we had a terrorist group attack us and kill innocent civilians. It happens all over the world and we do find the people who are involved with it. Sometimes we find them before and foil the plot, sometimes we find it afterwards. I seem to remember that there were a couple of other buildings including some out west that were targeted too but we caught the people doing that before it could happen.

Granted it probably won't go down in a we have 3 hours to find this shit out scenario like on 24, but it can literally be a matter of days or weeks and with the operative being captured it could even quicken the attack in order to get it done before they all get caught. The threat is there, don't ignore it. Someone has to make the judgment over which is the lesser of two evils. Can't you really fault them for picking the torture method? three thoudand people died through no fault of their own on 9/11 just so some group could make a statement about our government. Hundreds were killed and crippled in the Japan subways chemical attack, you have the Madrid train bombings, the London subway bombings and plenty of other bombings around the world. It isn't just Al Qeada we are talking about here.

"...gutted by Congress in the 1990s when they didn't want intelligence operatives paying off criminals for information..."

They're still doing it here in the US. The FBI paid a shady informant 230,000 bucks to rat out harmless, loud-mouthed nobodies as part of this case:

The government had no direct evidence. The confession was vague and even contradictory. And the statements about attacking American targets came only after heavy prompting from FBI interrogators.

America's FBI: "Incompetance and Pusillanimity through Proxy".

That's funny, I was able to find all kinds of stuff about gangs in London with a quick Google search. Either you're a liar, or completely naive.

Mugged by gang:
http://icsouthlondon.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0550wandsworth/tm_headline=mugged-by-gang-of-thugs&method=full&objectid=18485578&siteid=50100-name_page.html

169 gangs currently active in London:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/03/14/gang_insider_feature.shtml

Islamic gangs in London have guns:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/755

16-year-old boy murdered by gang:
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/64167-boy-skewered-death-railings-violent.html

Armed london gangs recruiting via YouTube:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=437617&in_page_id=1770

"London violence scarred us all":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/01/youthjustice.crime

Thug gangs ruining Liverpool:
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpoolnews/Thug-gangs-ruining-Blackpool.3781214.jp

Have fun when you have children and they're forced to join a gang.

Watch a couple of these hidden-camera episodes and get back to me with how unlikely you think this story is.

Or perhaps this.

Then again you might not mind if Britain ends up looking like France.

Just because the messenger is of ill repute (DailyMail in this case) doesn't mean the message is wrong or unlikely.

Thanks for this opinion, it helps understand why there is so little understanding between the US and the rest of the world.

For the record, I'm Australian, and so perhaps somewhat neutral. If I may respond :

> Europeans hold America to a higher standard than you do yourselves

This may be the perception, however Europeans by and large don't pretend to save the world from itself, while simultaneously bombing everyone and pretending to be restoring democracy everywhere in the process. The US government pretends to do this all the time. The US Gov went to the UN in NYC, and basically said "We are going to restore democracy in Iraq" "The Iraqi are going to welcome us with open arms". Don't you remember this ?

Look at the score card, and tell me whose standards weren't upheld again?

> You treat immigrants with such disdain, and then preach about human rights?

Europe has exactly the same problems regarding immigration than the US does. I seem to hear that the federal goverment wants to build a huge wall along the Rio Grande to keep wetbacks out. I heard that Arizona wanted to specifically tax recent immigrants to help build that wall. That's more than disdain, that's downright humiliation.

> You have domestic terrorism problems that you can't solve, and then you presume to tell us how to solve our terrorism problems?

Actually I think Europeans are slowly solving them. The Lockerby Lybians were found and charged thanks to international cooperation. We know who masterminded the Paris Metro attacks, he was recently arrested and extradited to France via the UK. This particular procedure was very long, but European countries have signed an international agreement for faster processing recently.

Notice that the UK didn't bomb Lybia as a result of Lockerby (the US did for other reasons, though!) and that France didn't bomb Algeria for the metro attacks.

Notice as well that internal terrorism is also hopefully being resolved. IRA vowed to disarm a year ago, and went ahead a few month later despite considerable doubt in the Protestant camp that this would ever happen.

The bottom line is that Europe has been coping with terrorism longer than the US have. I hear that the US got some tips from the Israeli. This is good, because if there is a country knows about terrorism, that is Israel. Note that they, too, despite considerable military and financial help from the US, still haven't resolved that issue.

> You are more than willing to ask for our help when things like Bosnia get out of control, but then your population would prefer to snub the US when it needs help?

Bosnia was the best US deed from recent memory. Thanks. However on the Iraq issue the US was not *asking* for help, it was *demanding* it. As in strongarming, refusing debate and even calls to the most basic rule of reason. Note that in the case of Afghanistan, where terrorists and 9/11 masterminds were harboured, *many* nations responded to the call. Even the French, who count 7 casualties so far in Afghanistan.

Regarding Iraq, it was well-known that Iraq was not involved. GWB wanted to go there to settle some kind of score and grab the 2nd largest known reserves of oil in the process. Some European refused, insisting that Iraq was not going to be the easy walk in that GWB was hoping for. Can we blame them?

> Well, from my perspective, you all look like a bunch of racist spoiled children

A very slippery slope here. When I studied in the US, I saw very few African-Americans doing advanced degrees like master's and PhD's. Why is that do you think ? when did the African-Americans acquire

This lawsuit has some really strange bedfellows.
First you have greenpeace which is afraid that its fellow members in ELF are bein listened in on.
Then you have Council on American-Islamic Relations who has said that terrorist suspects should have unlimited access to thier supporters back home.

There are plenty of worthwhile groups that looking into wiretapping and if it was legal, this lawsuit is not going to do anything. The only reason for the ACLU to do it is for the publicity; after all it is coming up to 1 year when they filed a suit saying that the US Government has no right to pick up and deport illegal aliens.

References, please

How smug of you.

http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/567

You need only search a little bit to figure out what CAIR's agenda is, and the ACLU supports CAIR, which means they support this:

"Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." - Omar Ahmad

As a gay man, how should I feel about the organization which stands up for the people who want to make Islam the highest authority in America and who gives money to offensive mujahideen?

As far as defending child predators goes, it's a quick search, too. Shame, shame, shame on me for posting a link to the concerned christian bitches of America, but it's not like a liberal website is going to report on this:

http://www.cultureandfamily.org/articledisplay.asp ?id=727&department=CFI&categoryid=cfreport

Here's the money quote:

"If I murdered or raped someone before, I can go to the parks," Falk said.

How should I feel about the group that stands up for that person's right to be around my 5-year-old in the park? Does my son not deserve to be safe from harm?

If I were you, I would answer back about "he having served his time" and what not, which means that you would gladly put my son in danger of a serial predatory child molester because you certainly wouldn't want a serial predatory child molester's rights infringed upon. If I were you, I would answer that with, "It's not about his rights, it's about everyone's! Because if they can do it to him, they can do it to you!" Wrong again! I'm not a serial predatory child molester.

And that seems to be what the ACLU is about: sticking up for the rights of the mujahideen and the serial predatory child molesters in the world. When it comes to victims of frivolous lawsuits, or victims of emininet domain abuse, or victims of hate crimes where the "wrong" colors are involved, then the ACLU is no where to be found! So, quite frankly, fuck them right up the ass with a red-hot iron poker. They don't care about individual rights to life, liberty, or property. They want their own weird "Everyone is Special" agenda.

Yes they do. This is how they catch missile smugglers and their middlemen in the US and abroad. Google for "undercover sell arms". Here are a few cases:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1392009/p osts
http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/30/nuclear.bust/
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030813-120408- 5099r.htm
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/569
http://earthops.org/rus_mafia_carib.html