Defenders of Freedom

"There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men."
--Edmund Burke


While the cable news companies are going on and on about having live coverage of General Michael Hayden's confirmation hearings for the top job at the CIA, they're really just hoping than some Senator from across the aisle to launch some mortar shells at the General on live TV. From what I know about D.C., the bombastic Senators are drawing up their cardboard posterboards, drafting questions, collecting articles, op-eds, position papers, past testimonies on and by Hayden, as well as the tedious and boring opening statements. All in all these individuals are chomping at the bit to appear before the cameras to condemn President Bush for appointing a member of the military to a civilian intelligence agency (Even though some five members of the military have served in this position), the surveillance program that monitors communications between American citizens and members of Al Qaeda outside of the US, the most recent data-mining that the NSA has been conducting to determine patters for terrorist actors and activities, as well as various other comments that are meant to through mud on the president and his efforts to secure this nation. So while the men and women of our intelligence services and the military are diligently working at dismantling and destroying the Islamic terrorists and their associates, not to mention keeping tabs on various other threats, members of the Senate the media and civil libertarians are finding ways to take shots at the CIA, NSA, and President Bush. Luckily, there's individuals in the media like the Washington Examiner's Jay Ambrose who are aware of the good work of the agencies, their workers and the President in the current War on Terrorism. In fact Ambrose makes a good point in his most recent column about how the folks yammering about how the President is becoming another Nixon by initiating such programs are really promoting wild-eyed fantasies that don't gel with reality which is the security of this nation post 9/11. Here's a sample of Ambrose's excellent column:

I know the other side of it, namely, that this program is helping to protect us against terrorist attacks. There is no denying that, against all odds, we have not suffered a massive terrorist hit since the Sept. 11 attacks, and I agree that this can hardly be an accident. We all know Islamic extremists want to kill big bunches of us, and it seems evident that this program could show how an overseas al-Qaeda member is making calls to phone line B, which also contacts C and D, who seem to be contacted by everyone the al-Qaeda member calls. Investigating computer-disclosed patterns could lead to the prevention of some future Sept. 11. But we don'’t know that for sure, and in the meantime, there'’s an administration to kick.

Oh, and while we are spitting in Bush'’s face, let'’s have a round of applause for USA Today and wish it well when the next Pulitzer Prizes are awarded. Thanks to its story, this program is no longer secret. That fact may render the program wholly ineffective, making the nonexpert second-guessers right as Americans get murdered, but you get slaps on the back in the newspaper business when you reveal such information, even if the people providing the information were breaking the law.

Darn, I hate it when this happens, but I just changed my mind. I don'’t think we should impeach or even criticize Bush for this program. I think we should instead criticize the critics whose arguments don'’t hold up except as demonstrations of political grandstanding in some cases, paranoia in others and pure hogwash in all of them.

For me, I can tolerate the programs that what draconian measures that would come out of the halls of Congress if we suffer an an attack on a more massive scale than what we saw on September 11th. So three cheers for our patriotic warriors who battle it out everyday with the terrorists of the world.