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CIA and Military to Have U.S. Snooping Powers?
Mr.Intel writes "The NY Times is reporting that 'The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations.' Although the measure was beaten back in committee, it appears that the administration is not satisfied with Patriot or Patriot II type powers..."
Need to create a mySQL Table?
I'm sure the CIA and military haven't been snooping before -- since it was against the law and all.
This might sound like a flamebait, but it's just an observation: Typically the people most eager to defend their right to bear arms for protection against a corrupt government are also the first ones to protect the government and the actions of the government in cases such as the Patriot act and similar.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
There are those who, in the wake of 9/11, felt that it was appropriate to point out all of our misdeeds around the world (and domestically) as being the source of this terrorism (let's not forget McVeigh and Waco). I am one of these people. HOWEVER....
It is shit like THIS that WE Americans slept through and let pass. When we have installed friendly dictators we did not tell our so-called leaders to piss off. These people do not work in a vacuum. They answer to us. And it is now, it is laws such as this which will go unchallenged which are the seeds of terrorism -- again, both here and abroad -- that will be sown into violent acts down the road.
So lets not deceive ourselves. If you don't like it, get off your ass and vote, protest, carry a sign, write a letter and most importantly talk to your friends and debate. WAY too much stifling of opinion these days and worst, justfied as being "patriotic."
And while I'm on a rant, I'll give an example. Our position in front of the UN was that Iraq was learning of the weapons team's destinations and playing a shell game with the WMD, right? We've now had unabated access to the entire country for a whole month with nobody left to move a goddamn thing. Where is it? Where are the WMD? Where is it, Bush? Where is it, Colon? Where is it, Blair? Thirty !@#$ing days in-country with thousands of military and private contractors looking for an OUNCE of banned weapons and nada. WMD requires infrastructre and we have half the deck in custody. Any of them would spill their guts in a second to get off light if there was anything to spill.
THIS IS NEWS. But do you see it? Do you see the reporters reporting? Do you see the investigators investigating? No. The country isn't stifled, my ass.
It is said that that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Well I hate to phrase it like this but the rest of the world has been getting the government we deserve. And now that the so-called chickens are coming home to roost in the form of Patriot I and II, everyone is bellyaching. Welcome to the disaster that has been the last 20 years.
Maybe this explains a few things. But whatever you do, don't pretend like the evedence wasn't there all along.
My
Limekiller
To the editors:
This kind of blantant power-grab should be on the front page, not buried in section. Even if you agree with the policies of the Busy administration, this is newsworthy.
That being said, this is nothing new. The military and CIA have been spying on the citenzry for a long time via the eschelon system. What this does is legalize it so that it is easier for the military and the cia. Currently the system is dependent on the good will of the canuks and the brits, and this move would get around that.
The way it works is that since its illegal for the US military and CIA to spy on their own citzens, they just request a the foreign goverments do it and report back to the US agencies. The US also does them the same favor by spying on canadian and brittish citizens.
The whole thing is a big load of crap.. but for Bush and the republicans to have the balls to try to make this legal.. wow.. 4th amendment anyone?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
A bunch of peasants armed with little more than rifles kicked us out of Vietnam. Furthermore, studies have predicted that only slightly more than half of our soldiers would obey if ordered to fire on their fellow Americans. The remainder who aren't good Germans would, presumably, mutiny.
Read up on what a few urban Jews with small arms did during the reduction of the Warsaw ghetto. Had the European Jews of the late '30s been armed as well as the average redneck, there might not have been a Holocaust.
I will note that this is much the same as the position of the ACLU on the Second Amendment. (Fair Disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, though I don't agree with their conclusion on this matter.)
As a student of military affairs, it is obvious to me that any attempt to fight a set-piece battle force-on-force with the U.S. military is pretty much doomed from the outset unless your men and equipment measure up to ours.
However, that does not mean that it is impossible to successfully engage and defeat our forces. Allow me to recommend The Battle for Hunger Hill by Daniel P. Bolger (ISBN 0891414533). This is the story of Colonel Bolger's experience at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, Louisiana. FYI, Ft. Polk is where the U.S. armed forces train for what they call "Low Intensity Conflict" and "Operations Other Than War".
As I understand Col. Bolger's account, the OPFOR at Ft. Polk regularly hands even elite units their ass with only a comparative handful of men. The typical "enemy" soldier at Ft. Polk is armed only with a rifle, a few grenades, and perhaps a sidearm. They work in teams of four men, which take on units of company size with ease. Astoundingly, the OPFOR teams use exactly three basic drills against an enemy unit: Break Contact, Box Ambush, and Baited Trap Ambush.
These teams do have some support in the form of mortar fires, but these must be of necessity sporadic and consist of only a few rounds when available. If memory serves me correctly, the mortar teams sometimes move the not-designed-to-be-man-portable-tubes by hand in order to avoid counter-battery fires.
Another book that, while fiction, might prove both educational and entertaining is The Prince, by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling (ISBN 0743435567). This is a compilation of the Falkenberg's Legion saga into a single volume. Much of the story concerns a ultra-modern military force fighting a well-funded and equipped guerrilla/terrorist uprising.
All of which is to say that small teams of highly motivated and dedicated individuals can and do defeat much larger units of our armed forces. Now, I'm not suggesting that every pick-up truck full of heavily-armed rednecks fits this description, but I think you'll allow that some of them might.
I would further point out that every member of the U.S. armed forces swears an oath to "[...] support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic;".
Imagine for a moment a hypothetical future in which the people have staged a general revolt against the federal government of the United States. For the sake of argument assume that this is a good-faith revolution with the stated goal of the restoration of constitutional government to the U.S. Furthermore, assume that the arguments for armed revolt are legitimate and beyond reproach, and a neutral outside observer would say that the President was an enemy of the Constitution. Now imagine the minds of the commanders. They have sworn oaths to both defend the Constitution and obey the President, each of which is now in direct opposition. I believe that at least some unit commanders would chose to join the rebellion. For further reading please see The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012 by Lt. Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.
You could say that the fact that the government troops would posses WMD might tip the balance in their favor, but I'm not sure even a cynical and corrupt U.S. regime would use WMD on their own soil. It is also unclear to me whether such WMD use would attract outside aid or intervention.
In conclusion, I think that the only time armed revolt b
Well, let me first state some basic things on which my conclusions:
(1) I don't believe people care about anyone other than their own friends and family. I think everyone likes to say publicly that they care about other people, but as long as evil nasty shit is happening to Someone Else, Somewhere Else, everybody's generally OK with it.
(2) If a population has enough $$$, they don't care about anything else (i.e., the government can do whatever it wants).
(3) The old saying you can't have beauty without ugliness, or happiness without sadness. Yin-yang...you need balance in order to have definition.
Now, my point.
I don't understand why anyone is the least bit surprised about any of this. Power wants to remain in power. Simple as that. It doesn't matter whether it's Republican, or Democrat, or Socialist, or Fascist. And, when the U.S. public doesn't give a shit (because, economy notwithstanding, most of us still have enough money to, like, go to movies and shit), the people in power can do anything they want. So why wouldn't they try?
I think that we are seeing the symptoms of the post-Cold War world. Simply put, there is no longer a strong foil for American culture. No yin to our yang. When the Soviet Union was a reasonably powerful country...the best way for American powermongers to stay in power was to hold up virtues like freedom, liberty, privacy, etc., because it made us look better than them.
But, now that there is no longer anyone we need to look better than...liberty and privacy, things which just get in the way of power, can now be jettisoned.
Unless China rises up as an enemy of the USA, or something, I expect to see a trend toward more and more powergrabs, the destruction of the few democratic principles this country was founded on in the first place, and a move toward totaliarianism.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong. But, I doubt it.
gameDB