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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (8531)	1/9/2006 10:17:56 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541602

"A dangerous and frightening complacency has fallen upon the land. There is little concern about the continuing terrorist threat." Maybe, just maybe, the terrorist threat isn't all that serious. Even completely unfettered the terrorists didn't cause as much damage as a flu bug. That makes this whole article a little strange.

To: Lane3 who wrote (8531)	1/9/2006 10:33:18 AM
From: MrLucky	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541602

New York Post INTEL, LIES & TREASON NY Post By RALPH PETERS Ralph Peters is a former military intelligence officer. ACCORDING to the Democratic Party's leaders, we all have been betrayed by the Bush administration's Big Brother intelligence tactics as evil government operatives invaded the privacy of innocent Americans. Stop lying. Show us the victims. Name one honest citizen who has been targeted by our intelligence system. Name one innocent man or woman whose life has been destroyed. Come on, Nancy. Give it up, Howard. Name just one. Can't do it? OK. Let's dispense with the partisan rhetoric and reach for the facts: 1) Has a single reader of this column suffered personally from our government's efforts to defend us against terrorists? Have any of your relatives or even your remotest acquaintances felt our intel system intrude into their lives? That's what I always ask the group-think lefties. Not one has ever been able to answer "Yes." 2) The same big-lie politicians attacking the president's efforts to uncover plots against America by monitoring terrorist communications will be the first to shriek that the War on Terror has failed when we're attacked again. They want it both ways: Drop our defenses, then blame Bush when terrorists strike. 3) The "eavesdropping" operations revealed so sanctimoniously by The New York Times aimed exclusively at foreign terrorists and their willing contacts on our soil. When such operations are "exposed," the terrorists find ways to work around them. Doesn't it just make sense to keep secrets from enemies who announce they want to kill Americans? Who already have killed Americans? 4) Would the Pelosi-Dean gang prefer to give the terrorists the run of the house? For all of their whining, the ultra-Dems have never laid out a coherent, detailed strategy of their own for fighting terror. Show us your plan! 5) Contrary to the nonsense concocted by Hollywood ("King Kong" was far more realistic than "Syriana"), the intelligence community isn't populated by evil sneaks plotting to destroy the constitution and assassinate bothersome citizens from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I worked in the intel field for 22 years and still give occasional lectures at various agencies, and the truth is that analysts and technicians work in cubicles that would make Dilbert run screaming. Recent recruiting efforts mean that more-senior officials work in cubicles, too. Our intelligence professionals could make more money in private industry. But they serve because they believe in our country and their mission. And not one of them goes to work in the morning asking, "How can I do a bad job for my fellow citizens today? How can I subvert the Constitution?" 6) Our intelligence system has so many built-in safeguards to protect the personal information of our citizens that it seemed like overkill to me. Intelligence reports couldn't include even a passing reference to any American citizen by name (given the variety of American names, we did a lot of scrambling to conform to the very strict rules). My fellow Americans, the real threats to your information security are Google, eBay, chat rooms, credit applications, junk mail, etc. And the Democratic National Committee holds vastly more information about individual American citizens in its files than do all of our intelligence agencies combined. 7) Self-interested renegades posing as whistleblowers aren't patriots, they're traitors. Not one of the recent "anonymous sources" has been able to cite a single example of an innocent American harmed by our intelligence campaign against Islamist terrorists. The leaks that so badly compromised our security were made to score political points by those who place their personal and political vendettas above our nation's safety. 8) We need to get serious about treason and the destructive culture of leaks — on both sides of the aisle. Let's face it: Both political parties have served our country badly with their use of leaks for partisan purposes. Compromising classified information, for any purpose and at any level, is a serious crime. Those who betray their trust and harm our national defense need to go to jail — for life. If we were truly serious, we'd treat treason as a capital offense again. THE dishonesty and cynicism on the American left is breathtaking. The only reason the Dems are hand-wringing over the imaginary threat to your personal secrets is that every other approach has failed them. They couldn't get the traction they expected by betraying our troops and declaring Iraq a failure (note how shamelessly the Dems have deserted Cindy Sheehan as her nuttiness turned radioactive — they'll bail on John Murtha, too, as he gets whackier). Now they're trying to convince you that Big Brother Bush is peeping through the blinds to make sure you and your spouse stick to the missionary position. The truth is that you are being endangered. By politicians so desperate to gain power that they willingly pave the way for terrorist attacks. The Dean-Pelosi chapter of the Osama bin Laden Fan Club has provided aid and comfort to our enemies. Reasoned dissent is patriotic, but serving as propaganda agents for mass murderers is something else. Now the Dem extremists are welcoming the compromise of clandestine programs to prevent terrorist attacks. They, not Bush, are flouting our laws. By encouraging the compromise of classified material. And you will pay. When the Islamist killers come to our soil again and left-wing politicians attempt to exploit our dead by howling that the War on Terror failed, just remember who it was that gave away our secrets to the terrorists.