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ACLU Sues FBI Over ISP Records
An anonymous reader writes "One of the provisions of the infamous USA PATRIOT Act is the ability for the government to force companies that hold personal information, specifically in this case, ISPs, to turn over their records without a court order. MSNBC is reporting about a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in secret because of another provision in PATRIOT that prevents public disclosure of these matters. The gag order was dropped when the Justice Department agreed to not take any action against the ACLU."
USA == Land of the not so free.
So would Slashdot turn over identifying information to the FBI et al if it was requested? What's the site's position on this?
> The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the FBI's use
> of expanded powers to compel Internet service providers to
> turn over information about their customers or subscribers.
> People who receive the letters are prohibited by law from
> disclosing to anyone that they did so. Because of this legal
> gag order, the ACLU was forced to reach an agreement with
> the Justice Department before a heavily edited version of the
> lawsuit could be unsealed.
"PATRIOT Act"? Damn you, Orwell and your Newspeak!
So the ACLU was suing to protect Americans' privacy from the government prying into ISP customer data. But no one knew about it, since there's another law that prevents the ACLU from telling the public. So they're basically fighting for our freedoms in secret?
It reminds me of that light from the classic show, "The Prisoner": "Why don't you just lock us all up and be done with it?"
I call upon the self-proclaimed conservatives who never tire of claiming they're against "big government". Stop for a minute punctuating every sentence with "terrorism," and "support the troops; we're at war!" like some sort of right-wing Speak and Spell. Remember this on election day: Bush believes the PATRIOT Act should be renewed and celebrated. There's your big government, pal.
Sheesh. Someone get me a valium.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
going to limit the ability of the RIAA to get the names of people downloading misic. i mean if the gov't can't do it, then why should the riaa be able to?
Kudos to /. for recognizing that PATRIOT is an acronym... you rarely see it properly noted as such.
Providing
Appropriate
Tools
Required to
Intercept and
Obstruct
Terrorism
or the "real" meaning...
Providing
Americans with
The
Real
Incentive to
Overlook
Tyranny
Thank God for the American Civil Liberties Union. For everyone who hasn't done so yet, I recommend visiting the ACLU website as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and donating, even if it's just a small amount. Help keep America free.
This is a special excite
This
Maybe you don't agree with a lot of their suits or think they waste resources and time on foolish pursuits, but this time they hit the nail on the head. Hopefully we'll open up the little breach in the PATRIOT dam that'll grow big enough to topple it.
And don't forget:
"President Bush has been pushing Congress to renew all of the Patriot Act before it expires next year..."
Vote.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
So far, We've seen media-described breaches of all of these in the DoJ, FBI, and Military holdings in the military base in Cuba.
Why do we still have this president again?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And about time this is happening, too.
I'm always amazed at Americans who consider being a "card-carrying member" of the ACLU a bad thing.
Sure, you may not agree with some of the individuals they protect, but it is comforting to know that there is an organization that will protect the rights of anyone, irrespective of personal opinions/feelings/politics.
The USA is supposed to be a country based on the Constitution, and was founded with the belief that every individual has natural rights that need to be protected -- against the government, against the majority, against those in power. These ACLU folks are every bit as patriotic as the folks in the armed forces doing their duty overseas that the current presidential administration loves to trumpet about. To see true patriots go up against the so-called "PATRIOT Act" warms my heart.
Does anyone else find the fact that they can't even share the details of the lawsuit with us incredibly scary?
Whether the rest of the PATRIOT act remains or not, we should at least have the right and opportunity to free and open public debate about it.
Hide all the details when you're looking for information, sure, but don't hide the details and criticisms of the act. That is exactly the sort of thing that we all have a right to know.
I think that this is a good move.
It is unfortunate that the P.A. even was passed.
I spent some time studying the US constitution this semester, and although I havn't looked at the P.A., I suspect that it breaches the writ of habeus corpus in the US constitution.(Its not even in an amendment- its in the original document)
Writ of Habeus Coprpus: A summons to a gaoler demanding that they present themselves and their prisoner to the judge, so that the gaoler can give an account of why the prisoner is being held.
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
You were saying?
The ACLU has often been criticized for "ignoring the Second Amendment" and refusing to fight for the individual's right to own a gun or other weapons. This issue, however, has not been ignored by the ACLU. The national board has in fact debated and discussed the civil liberties aspects of the Second Amendment many times.
We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government. In today's world, that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles. The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.
Troll moderation is right. The ACLU takes care of all the ammendments that the NRA doesn't take care of. It would be a waste of time any money for the ACLU to duplicate the efforts of the NRA.
The reality is that many right wingers have a serious problem with the ACLU, because the ACLU takes on cases that they consider to be "liberal". The ACLU isn't interested in the politics of the situation - they protect Republicans and Democrats alike. They even defend some people who are quite morally despicable, such as racists.
But, those racists have rights too, and they must be protected.
So, when you hear people like this DAldredge railing against the ACLU because they don't take 2nd ammendment cases, what you should understand is that these right wing buffoons really HATE when the ACLU takes on liberal cases, but they don't have a rational reason for opposing the ACLU. This bogus charge that they don't care about the 2nd ammendment is ALL THAT THEY HAVE.
And even the ACLU is being honest about their position. When it comes right down to it, the ACLU doesn't think that the 2nd ammendment was talking about individuals, but state militias. But, this opinion does NOT cause them to litigate along those lines. The ACLU stays out of that conflict to concentrate on areas where there is nobody else fighting for the preservation of rights.
DAldredge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're a partisan mudslinger first, and an American second. I doubt that there's any room in there for much appreciation of the Bill of Rights, and the affirmative good that the ACLU has brought to its defense.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Since the current administration views the Presidency as answerable to no entities, domestic (judiciary, congressional, public) or foreign, they will keep attacking the Constitution as long as they are in power. And they will do this with a free conscience becasue they are incapable of even imagining that anything they do is wrong. After all, God put them in place to do it all.
I believe that you misunderstand the situation.
The ACLU is not challenging the FBI's ability to request ISP customer data from suspected criminals or other shady figures.
What it is challenging is the fact that under the PATRIOT Act of 2001, the FBI can now do this "without a judge's approval."
"The ACLU lawsuit contends that the USA Patriot Act...expanded the FBI's power to use national security letters by deleting parts of an earlier law requiring that there be some suspicion that the subject of the probe was linked to spying or terrorism."
Thus, in the past the FBI had to go to a court and get approval before they received authorization to access all this data. Now, however, they don't need to show any reasonable suspicion. That's what the ACLU is arguing.
Let's disregard the whole argument "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about" routine. Consider for a moment that you haven't done anything wrong, but your ISP's records are requested by the FBI via an NSL. So, there goes your privacy. Maybe you cruised a pr0n site or two, maybe you shared some freely-distributable music. Does the fact that the FBI can investigate you without cause scare you? It should.
From the other side of things, it's nice that the government can just barge right in to grab the information that's needed... but... I wonder; if the FBI can demand such information without reasonable suspicion, and without court order, what's the point? To make it faster? More secret? What is it about obtaining a warrant that takes so long that it warrants (pardon the pun) circumventing judicial approval? From what I understand (and please feel free to enlighten me), as long as there's reasonable suspicion, there should be no roadblocks to obtaining a warrant. So what's the point of this portion of PATRIOT? Looks like more government power to me.
Name the country that used the following law enforcement tactics
- Authorizes the use "Secret" Search Warrants that may be carried out without the recipients knowledge and prevent the recipient from discussing said warrant and search with anyone including legal council, which do not define the nature of the search in any means.
- Makes it a Federal Offence to discuss any "secret action" taken by law enforcement by any knowledgeable party.
- Where National Security reasons apply allows suspects to be secretely detained only on law enforcements "reasonable" suspicion and to be held indefinitely without any formal charge nor the ability to seek council or contact anyone to infomr them of their detainment.
- Allows for Court proceedings to be held in secret and all records thereof to be sealed from the public.
Select the answer from the Following List
A) Soviet Russia (USSR)
B) Nazi Germany
C) United States of America
D) All of the above
I am a huge supporter of the ACLU, and I have to agree that they pay only lip-service to this part of the Bill of Rights. Clearly, the whole nonesense about the National Guard being the "militia" mentioned is just a convenient gloss-over for those who don't think a repeal of the 2nd Amendment is feasible.
But, I ask you this -- isn't it better to support an organization that does protect the majority of the Bill of Rights vigorously than to let all our rights fall into oblivion? Let's get behind protecting as much as we can -- not tearing down those who don't match up to every one of our expectations.
Sometimes, you have to choose the half-full glass to get anything at all, or choose the lesser of two evils...
troll.
Yeah, but I've previously gone on record as believing that not all trolls are without merit and have garnered a few troll moddings myself.
besides what makes you think the ACLU has a slated view of the bill of rights
Probably statements like this, taken from their website:
If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns.
It doesn't even really make sense, it's the sort of "logic" that allows you to justify anything.
I think he got the count wrong though. The ACLU only has 8 ammendments in their version, since they leave out the one that everyone else leaves out as well, the most important one really, since it provides the rights that most people argue we don't have.
That would be the Ninth Ammendment.
That one was put in there to appease the Hamiltonians who argued that an explict Bill of Rights would be used to limit rights by falsely interpreting the specific wording, allowing Congress to make law that the Constitution gave them no authority to.
Looks like old Alex and the boys nailed that one dead on I'm afraid.
KFG
Check out the ACLU's page on the challenge. There's info on the (redacted) complaint itself, a press release, and related cases and efforts.
Here.
--Ryv
Once upon a time, a young bull and an old bull were standing on a hill, overlooking a valley full of cows.
The young bull said to the old bull, "Hey, old bull, let's run down into the valley and maybe we can fuck one of them cows!"
The old bull turned to the young bull with a wizened eye and said "No. We walk down. We fuck 'em all."
Upon hearing this, the young bull was enlightened.
Well said. The typical "libertarian" reply that because that the ACLU doesn't litigate over the 2nd amendment that NOTHING they do is worthwhile is illogical and like you said mainly a cover for people who just dislike them because they perceive the ACLU to be liberal.
Maybe, MAYBE you would have a reason not to support them if they actually litigated AGAINST your interests, but if they don't then what exactly is the problem? Any money you would donate would go towards things you would support, none would go against your interests, but because they don't spend money on every case you would want them to you're going to refrain from supporting them? It's stupid, it's illogical, and it's intellectual cowardice.
Their full position can be read here. You may not agree with it; but it is a perfectly valid position to take, and in no way inconsistent with their and praiseworthy longstanding defense of our civil liberties.
Im neither a lawyer or an american, but even i can see that this whole thing is totally unconstitutional to the point where you have to wonder: if bush came right out tomorrow and said "the bill of rights is null and void" would there be mass protest? or would there be a little poll on the cnn website?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
1933:
Reichstag burned
Attack blamed on communists.
Enabling Act is imposed giving special powers to Hitler.
2001:
Twin Towers destroyed
Attack blamed on terrorists.
Patriot Act is imposed giving special powers to Bush, et al.
What utter, utter rubbish.
The Government has no, zero, nada right to conduct surveillance of me! Who the fuck do they think they are?
The problem is that people seem to be forgetting that Governments are there to serve the people- not the other way around.
It's Governments that need to be put under surveillance- NOT the public. The problem is that acts like Patriot turn that completely around- and then you get people like the parent poster *accepting* the basic premise of such legislation! Now *THAT'S* scarey.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
OK, OK, I'm with everyone that decries the abomination and desecration of the Constitution that the "Patriot Act" is.
Let's move on, though.
Beneath the knee-jerk reaction is a reasonable intention: what can be done to better protect a free society from being victimized by terrorists?
Is it not possible to craft legislation that achieves this goal in a more effective manner with less infringement of individual liberties?
[I've been a fan of Bruce Schneier and his observation that more effective and more economical security policies, for computers and for the broader arena, are frequently overlooked.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The ACLU provides abortion and family planning services? That's news to me.
Furthermore, the situation between the ACLU and the NRA isn't nearly the same as between the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. For 2nd ammendment rights, the first name you think of is NRA. Everybody who cares about 2nd ammendment rights belongs to the NRA.
It is a fact that the ACLU was the first organization to argue for abortion rights. Got that right off the link you provided. Therefore, the ACLU isn't duplicating the efforts of other agencies. The other agencies are duplicating the ACLU with regard to their legal actions.
But, as I said before, the ACLU doesn't provide family planning services, those are provided by Planned Parenthood.
In other words, you got nothing.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Go read about the secret FBI files kept during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Read all about them. There are many, many, clearly documented examples of the government tracking and taking careful notes on the legal activities of citizens. There are also plenty of examples of the government then using those notes to harm those citizens.
Tell us if you think that it is ok for the government to keep secret files on citizens.
My grandfather publically protested shady government construction contracts in the 1960s, and the FBI followed him and harassed him until he lost his business. The work he found to support his family - manual labor installing isulation - killed him. We know he has an FBI file, but my mother is waiting until her mother dies before she fights to read it.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
If some goverment functionary wants to snoop through my ISPs records to see that I spend 80% of my time online surfing for porn let them have at it...I am not going to worry about it because the courts will settle it.
So you also don't mind if they hold you as a "material witness" during the course of their investigation? You don't mind floating the bill for your lawyer? And if you can't afford one (of course the state will provide you with a very competent one to stand for your defense), what about all the time you lose at your job or with your family? Or the unnecessary embarrassment - who's going to hire you from now on? Your name has now been stained unneedingly.
If you want to go through all of that over nothing, be my guest.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If there was no Patriot Act, you guys would bash the President for not having something in place.
Well, I can't speak for everyone on Slashdot, but I personally would not be complaining about the lack of PATRIOT.
I hope you understand that the Patriot Act passed with only 3 no votes. So even if he did veto it, it would still be enacted. So you all should be bashing your local congress/senate person for voting for it
I can't agree, for a number of reasons.
a) The Bush administration was the originator of the PATRIOT Act. Congress didn't get together and say "gee, it would be really great if judges were cut out of the law enforcement loop...let's make an act allowing this!" That's all Ashcroft.
b) Saying that "because element X also did something wrong, you should not complain about element Y" is not correct reasoning. Perhaps they should be recieving flak that they are currently not; that does not mean that Bush should not be complained at.
c) Just because they voted for it does *not* mean that they would override a veto of it -- that Bush vetoing the vote would not have stopped PATRIOT. There's a significant political difference between the two.
It is interesting seeing a Bush supporter on Slashdot, though.
May we never see th
Keep in mind that the governments of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany are no longer in power. The US can't say the same, so for the posters who have been flying off the handle: of course it's not the exact same because the US isn't finished yet! Among other things, the government is trying to drum up support to make the PATRIOT Act *permanent*. Is this a good idea given the history of nationalized secrecy? THIS is the major point of the original poster, for United Statesians to keep their eyes open and realize the histories of the path that the US Government *may* be going down.
And let's not even get into the absurdity of the Bush Administration's cynical attempts to invent exceptions to the Geneva Convention, since this thread is already in severe danger of going Bozon-nuclear.
While the USSR and Germany were leftist movements and the US is rightist, the government's promises are the same: that the citizens will be safer and better off if they let the government do what they want. Secrecy only benefits those with the secrets.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
is the widespread belief that a descent into true tyranny is impossible in the USA.
When the average American hears tales of abuse of the Patriot act, he thinks of ACLU bleeding hearts protecting terrorists. At most, he might be able to conjure up government agents using personal data to catch a tax-evader or getting a list of a citizen's favorite pron sites. He concludes that this isn't so bad if it helps combat terrorism.
We've been taught to think of America being "the land of the free" and having a superior political system to the rest of the world. Therefore, many of us have difficulty making the connection between giving the government more power to go after "bad guys" with the possibility of such powers being used to quell political dissent.
I feel that we are firmly on a road that will lead to an dictatorship in the USA. We've given up important rights and more are sure to follow. Eventually, opposing views will be squashed to the point where only certain "approved" candidates will even be allowed to run for office (ala pre-invasion Iraq).
-- scsg
The analogy does not hold. A parents job often includes protecting a child from himself (drugs, peer pressure, etc). The government is NOT supposed to protect someone from themselves. Governments serve the people, parents don't "serve" their children, at least not in the same respects. The government will need to invade people privacy from time to time, thats what search warrents and the like are for. But they shouldn't be allowed to do it in secret. And there should be definit limits to that power. You have to draw the line somewhere. The patriot act goes well past where I would draw it, indeed where I think most americans would draw it.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Gore would have known about the attacks months beforehand, as published in the PDB, and taken action, instead of allowing the attacks to occur to create a reason to invade Iraq.
--
Theoritically the government only has the rights that the people allow it to. And to a certain extent this is the case here. The PATRIOT Act (it is actually an acronym) gives the government the power to conduct surveillance. Was there a huge uproar when the Act was introduced? Did letters and emails flood Congress opposing the Act? Were representations made to those ellected to represent you?
From a human rights and constitutional point of view certain parts of the Act can and should be challenged, but it seems so far that this has not been pursued vigorously.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
even though most of you have never read it, nor have any idea what it actually does.
I'd be willing to bet that the typical Slashdot reader is more informed than the typical Joe on what the PATRIOT Act is and means from the articles here. I am also willing to bet that the typical Slashdot reader opposes (more strongly than the average Joe, at least) the PATRIOT Act. This is an interesting correlation.
As for reading it -- the PATRIOT Act is a very large piece of legal text, and reading the thing in its entirety and original form is not, I think, reasonable to expect everyone to do. It might be a good thing, but I have never read my state's full legal code, even though I am governed by it and could go to jail for violating it.
May we never see th
I'm a 'third party' swing voter (meaning I haven't found a party I can entirely agree with enough to become a card-carrying member - No, don't go posting a link to the Libertarians as if I've never heard of them. I have, and I don't agree with them enough to support them, although they do resonate with me on some issues and I have voted for their candidate on several occasions.)
Anyway, the point is that I often ignore the Republican vs Democrat issues, knowing full well that I'm voting for neither one, and that on the issues that matter most to me, they aren't that different from each other.
But I've been a major fan of Feingold ever since the Communications Decency Act (part 1). He voted that down (even though it was just a rider on a larger telecom bill), for a number of good reasons he cited in his statement about his vote. Most importantly he said it was wrong to enact laws that define stricter standards of free speech for new mediums as opposed to existing ones. Why is it that things a newspaper can get away with in print should be disallowed for an individual to say online? The fact that the new medium of the internet is quicker, more open, and turns everyone into a publisher, shouldn't be a reason to get stricter on it - just the opposite, really." Feingold was the ONLY SENATOR to oppose the bill. The ONLY ONE. The vote was 98 in favor, 1 abstain, and 1 against. Feingold was that single voice against it (and the supreme court ruling that declared it unconstitutional afterward vindicates his stance.)
That took courage. That took guts. I became a big fan of his on that day and started paying more attention to his voting record. I don't agree with every vote, but the ones that are really important, on issues where congress was trying to move the country to a more totalitarian format, Good Ole Russ was there as the (usually) lone dissenter - saying that no issue is more important than the freedoms of our citizens down the road, that selling away our future rights to take care of an temporary problem is not good policy, even when that temporary problem is something as big and momentous as a major terrorist act killing thousands.
He was also the lone dissenter in the Patriot Act. Again, a very brave thing to do given that opponents can use that to paint him as a traitor, and they probably will try that tactic.
I've sent him a letter (on dead trees, since that tends to get more notice), stating that as long as he keeps it up with this kind of stance against selling out freedom to gain temporary security, that he will continue to have my vote (Yes, I live in Wisconsin so I can do that). The letter also stated that I don't agree with him on lots of his other votes, and that I am not a Democrat, but that no issue is more important today than this one, and so the fact that he's the only one in office with the guts to stand up to these bills means he has won me as an ardent supporter. (And I closed with the famous Ben Franklin quote about giving up freedom for safety and deserving neither.)
I was pleasantly surprised to get a snail-mail reply to this letter, and some of the things in the text of the reply make it clear that it was not just a form letter, as it made explicit references to the fact that I said I am not a member of his party but support him anyway. It was not written by him, but by a staffer (and it was honest enough to say so explicitly), but the gist of it was that the senator had received a lot of similar letters in response to his patriot act vote, too many to answer them all in person, but that the senator's standard response to all such letters was to let people know that he does plan to continue this trend of voting, no matter the consequences.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Was there a huge uproar when the Act was introduced?
Well, yes and no. 26 October 2001 was the day President Bush signed the PATRIOT Act into law, and as the poster above has mentioned it followed the anthrax scare that began around 4 October 2001 (not to mention the 11 September World Trade Center attacks), used by Bush to political advantage in his signatory speech:
Most disturbing is that most supporters of the PATRIOT Act accept the possibility that it might infringe (it does) on citizens' liberties with the reasoning that the government will only go after terrorists who don't deserve rights anyway; that FBI agents will only issue writs - erm, letters - of "national security" (one-page forms that require a court clerk to okay a warrant to search someone's home or workplace and that issue a gag order so that no one can tell the target they've been searched) against terrorists; that the government is never wrong; and that, after all, even if they do monitor people's Internet traffic, they'll only do it to the real threats (which in this case might mean "people conversing in Arabic on the Internet").
The reason there's little opposition from some quarters is that most people think the Act doesn't affect them much; others' civil liberties simply don't come into consideration, particularly when those others constitute a significant minority of the population (say, Arab-Americans, hundreds of whom under provisions of the PATRIOT Act have been detained without access to legal counsel or their families or the outside world for up to a year and released with no remuneration except a "sorry about that" letter from the State Department; and nobody-knows-how-many more of whom remain incarcerated indefinitely). Our legislative system is one where fifty-one percent can pass a bill. (Well, it might possibly require more than that in the Senate because of filibusters and cloture votes and the possibility of Presidential veto - but we definitely operate on a majority rather than a unanimity system for reasons of expediency.) The effect is that the inalienable rights of a minority can be, well, alienated by even a well-intentioned majority only seeking to preserve its own interests.
The fact that you haven't seen much public outcry about the PATRIOT Act (notwithstanding the hundreds of villages and townships that have passed resolutions at least symbolically refusing to cooperate with its provisions, and ignoring the national tour that John Ashcroft had to make - abandoning his duties as Attorney General for a PR campaign - to try to boost the Act) means that many people simply don't care bec
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Listen! I am so sick and tired of this NO WMD shit - did you spend months of your lives in Saudi Arabia enforcing No Fly Zones under Clinton? NO!
Did you watch as daily the number of missiles fired at US and UK pilots by the Iraqi's increased to roughly 40 or 50 shots a day - the only thing keeping them from being successful shootdowns being the skill of the pilots, and effective countermeasures (including ones you can't read about at JANE's yet)? NO!
Did you bust your ass filling chaff and flare containers, and have a $80 plaque bought and paid for by those same pilots out of graditude that you were doing your job and letting them come home to fly again tomorrow hanging on the wall beside your desk? NO!
Guess what, I FUCKING DID!
THERE are a MILLION reasons we should have been in Iraq long before 9/11 - how many countries do we let try to kill our boys on a daily fucking basis before we do something - it was so commonplace that you didn't hear it on the news but I saw it with my own two eyes. I do not support Bush in the upcoming election strictly because of my stance against the PATRIOT act. BUT, and make no mistake about it - NO ONE doubted the existence of WMD's in Iraq before the war - even those opposed to it - further do you realize you could bury enough WMD's to kill the populace of the planet in an area smaller than a football feild - in the middle of nowhere - have you ever been to Iraq? There is plenty of uninhabited areas that could have millions of said areas hidden in them and no one would ever know.
Clinton is the one that called for regime change in 1998 (November 14, 1998 to be exact.) Iraq did support terrorism (paying the families of Suicide Bombers $250,000.00 as a reward, openly and overtly) and the ties to Bin Laden, while not fully 100% provable are highly likely - few debate this.
China doesn't shoot at our planes on a daily basis, and at least tries to be a productive member of the international community and is willing to come to the table and discuss issues, and occasionally make concessions.
Yes, we were the aggressor, but it put an end to the cat and mouse game of the US and UK pilots putting their ass on the line daily to enforce the NFZs in Iraq and the majority of the populace in the country is glad we are there (but that doesn't make for good news stories.) I suggest that an average of 367 attempted shootdowns of coalition planes per year for more than a decade to be plenty of reason to exert military force upon a nation. But, then again, I'm one of those that served the US Military while no one cared or gave a shit about the Military because two towers in NY hadn't been attacked successfully, I'm one that didn't have people protesting in the streets to bring my ass home while I did my stints in the sandbox, I'm one that didn't get a $700 extra rebate from the car manufacturers because I put my ass on the line - no instead I was turned down for vehicle loans BECAUSE I was in the military.
Those of us that served before 9/11 in Operation Southern/Northern Watch, are sick and tired of people who fail to look at the whole picture because it wasn't spoonfed to you by CNN - STFU or admit that it was fine and dandy with you for us to allow the Iraqis to attempt to kill me, my friends, and my coworkers, but it's not ok for my friends and my coworkers to defend themselves now.
War is shit, and there is always an arguement against it, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do. Suck it up and accept reality.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society - M. Twain