On the RNC Platform Finding NSA Programs Unconstitutional

The Republican National Committee is claiming that the USA Patriot Act's NSA provisions are now unconstitutional?

Really?

And they want investigations too?

A page-long resolution also called for "a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying." This committee would then make suggestions for reform beyond what President Barack Obama suggested a week ago. The committee also wants to "hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance."

The full text of the resolution is here.

It would be laughable if it weren't so pathetically politically motivated.

Back in 2001, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Patriot Act:

senate.gov (passed US Senate 98-1, the one person being Russ Feingold).

clerk.house.gov (211 GOPers approved, versus 3 opposed, including Ron Paul; 145 Democrats approved versus 66 opposed).

Read carefully through the names of those who approved the Patriot Act. There are a whole lot of familiar names. Both Darrell Issa and John Boehner voted for the Act.

But if that isn't enough, let's look more recently at the 2011 extension of the Patriot Act. It passed 250-153 with 28 no votes. Once again, Issa voted for. Even Louie Gohmert voted for this.

By investigations, I guess that means Darrell Issa will have to investigate himself.

Back in 2001, every GOP senator voted for this; some of them are still in the US Senate today. Did any of them misunderstand the Act? Did every one of the 211 GOPers who voted for it in the House misunderstand the Act and ignore the constitutionality? Some of them are still in Congress today too.

Did any of these same people then suddenly find that the law was unconstitutional in 2011 when they reauthorized the provisions of the Patriot Act (Pub.L. 112-14), knowing full well that there were provisions that might collect data on the US, inadvertently or on purpose? The answer, of course, is no; they approved the legislation and reauthorized the law enabling the NSA to continue gathering data.

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Back in 2006, the media revealed that the NSA amassed a massive database of calls, which they said was targeted on international calls, but that too had caveats.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

So, even after the 2006 revelations and Congressional briefings by security officials, they were still satisfied that the programs were constitutional.

So what's changed that the GOP is now claiming that these programs/actions are unconstitutional.

It isn't the NSA's actions.

It isn't the law either.

I'd argue that the only thing that's changed is that the GOP thinks that they've found an issue on which to hurt Democrats. I'm not alone in finding the flip-flop on the NSA and eavesdropping programs that the GOP formerly authorized so confounding (well, not really - it's more enlightening about tactics and politics than about the specific policy itself).

But by convenience (and in the same way that they turned on a dime to claim that the ACA's individual mandate was unconstitutional) they're now claiming that a position they once held was unconstitutional.

It's got nothing to do with the constitutionality of the NSA enabling legislation or the actions/results of the NSA programs. It has a whole lot to do with who won the White House and who won reelection in 2012.

So, it leads to a quandary: is the GOP pleading ignorance of the law they championed, or are they playing politics in the hopes of dinging the President and Democrats? It's not like they can claim they were duped either. The 2006 revelations were well documented and should have informed decisions to reauthorize the law, including in 2011, and yet the law was reauthorized without concern about the constitutionality by these Republicans.

Well, they're going to play it both ways. And neither is particularly satisfying.

It's one thing to argue that the programs should be allowed to sunset because the threat has past or that additional reforms need to be instituted. It's quite another to claim that the program is unconstitutional little more than a year after reauthorizing the law for a second time.

It was enacted with sunset clauses, meaning that it would require Congress to reauthorize - to look at the law with a critical eye and evaluate how the law operated in practice. They've now done so at least two times - 2006 and 2011, with amendments added in several other acts of Congress since first enacted in 2001.

Each time, the law was approved with support from Republicans.

Indeed, the current version of the law is far more protective of US civil rights and limits what the NSA can do with far stronger oversight. Many of the revelations about the NSA refer to actions before the Obama Administration came to office and before the reforms were instituted.

Only now, with a Democrat in the White House is there a complaint that the ongoing program is unconstitutional, when it was revealed to be doing the same exact thing that it was revealed to have done in 2006 (and to which Congress knew or should have known all along pursuant to the regular briefings to Congress).

Cross posted at LGF.

Because They Have Nothing Better To Do

What are Congressional Democrats thinking when they put out ideas like tasking the CIA and other intelligence agencies with trying to track down global warming threats.

Senior House Republicans are complaining about Democrats' plans to divert "scarce" intelligence funds to study global warming.

The House next week will consider the Democrat-crafted Intelligence Authorization bill, which includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security.

"Our job is to steal secrets," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"There are all kinds of people analyzing global warming," he told The Washington Times. "There's no value added by the intelligence community here; they have no special expertise, and this takes money and resources away from other threats."

Democrats, who outnumber Republicans on the committee, blocked the minority from stripping the warming language from the bill.

That's not their job. And even if it were, would the CIA even get it right? After all, the CIA missed the intel on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the WMD in Iraq, al Qaeda's numerous attacks on the US, etc.

It's not like the CIA doesn't already have a full plate, trying to get a handle on the Islamic terrorist groups and their backers in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Then, there are the ongoing threats and analysis for places like China and Russia and emerging and continuing threats in places like Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, and most of Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Where does global warming fit in exactly? It doesn't.

This tells you all you need to know about the priorities of Democrats in Congress. They think global warming is a threat on par with terrorism and that the CIA should task its limited assets to investigating an issue that is already in the purview of agencies like NASA and NOAA along with the Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, and the EPA.

Senate Investigation Finds Able Danger Claims Lacking

The Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected as untrue one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — a congressman's contention that a team of military analysts identified Mohamed Atta or other hijackers before the attacks — according to a summary of the panel's investigation obtained by The Times.

The conclusion contradicts assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and a few military officers that U.S. national security officials ignored startling intelligence available in early 2001 that might have helped to prevent the attacks.

In particular, Weldon and other officials have repeatedly claimed that the military analysts' effort, known as Able Danger, produced a chart that included a picture of Atta and identified him as being tied to an Al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weldon has also said that the chart was shared with White House officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security advisor.

But after a 16-month investigation, the Intelligence Committee has concluded that those assertions are unfounded.

"Able Danger did not identify Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker at any time prior to Sept. 11, 2001," the committee determined, according to an eight-page letter sent last week to panel members by the top Republican and Democrat on the committee.

Weldon, the focus of an unrelated Justice Department corruption probe, was defeated last month in his campaign for an 11th term in a suburban Philadelphia district that has a large GOP majority in voter registration. Attempts were unsuccessful Sunday to reach a Weldon spokesman and an attorney representing Weldon in the Justice Department investigation.

The Senate panel began investigating Able Danger in August 2005, after Weldon and people close to the program went public with their claims. At the time, Weldon was the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.

The recently completed probe also dismissed other assertions that have fueled conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

The panel said it found "no evidence" to support claims by military officers connected to Able Danger that Defense Department lawyers prevented the team's analysts from sharing their findings with FBI counter-terrorism officials before the attacks.

Nor was the alleged chart or any information developed by Able Danger improperly destroyed at the direction of Pentagon lawyers, the panel concluded — a charge that had stoked claims of a cover-up.

Though the committee concluded that claims about Able Danger were unfounded, two of the hijackers were known to the U.S. intelligence community before the Sept. 11 attacks. The two had been observed by the CIA attending a meeting with Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia, but that information was not shared with other agencies in time to locate them after they had entered the United States and moved to San Diego.

The Rabbit Hole

The New York Times is running a major story today about how the US Defense Department published online hundreds of thousands of documents captured in Iraq that required translation and hoped to utilize the distributed knowledge of Internet users to translate the information.

Well, the Times now claims that the information published online included primers on how to build nuclear weapons - information that could prove useful to the likes of Iran. That is, if the Times reporting itself is correct. If the reporting is indeed correct, that changes everything - and not for the better for Democrats.

That begs quite a few questions. Does this not show that Iraq was indeed working on nuclear weapons programs and reserving the technical know-how to produce the weapons the moment sanctions were lifted? Indeed the Times actually goes further than that:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

For those that are still slow on the uptake, that would mean not only that Iraq had the garden variety WMDs, but was quite close to having the ultimate WMD - a nuclear weapon at its disposal.

It also raises yet more questions about the disposition of the program itself - where are the ultimate traces of the program. The papertrail deserves additional examination and it needs to be done swiftly.

Also, the rationale for shutting down the site (which the DoD did overnight) included concerns that Iran might be able to exploit the database for its own purposes. Does this not show that the world's concern about Iran's nuclear program are well-founded if this database could be used by the Iranians to aid in the development of their own nuclear program. If the Iranian program was for peaceful means, how and why would the Iraqi weapons program prove useful?

Why does the New York Times now suddenly realize that this database contains sensitive information that must be shut down, when only weeks and months earlier found no problem highlighting the NSA and SWIFT programs designed to hunt down terrorists around the world via their communications and financial transactions. The sudden shift cannot possibly be because of an election coming up, would it? Allah questions the timing. The sudden interest in national security just days before an election does seem most curious. Michelle Malkin concurs. It is curious alright.

Ed Morrissey, who has been on top of the publication of data from this database of documents notes that the nature of these documents must be legit if the Times is running the story in this fashion. He, among others, wonders now if everyone who has called the Administrations liars will now admit that they themselves were wrong since Bush appears to have been vindicated based on this Times story.

Now, if the Times got its reporting wrong, and tried to claim that the database information wasn't as important as they claim - trying to stress that the Administration's hold on classified information is flawed right before an election based on inaccurate reporting itself becomes the story: The Times itself would be trying to swing the election based on shoddy reporting.

That's why this story should be a win-win for the GOP. Not only would one outcome be that the GOP and Bush are vindicated by the Administration going into Iraq, but the flipside is that the Times pushing a bogus story right before the election would further seal its fate - and that of Democrats who hope this story might hurt the GOP right before an election.

Others blogging: Stop the ACLU (and here), Macranger, AJ Strata, and more to come.

UPDATE:
For a good review on the NYT duplicity at election time, and how they may have completely sabotaged Democrat chances going forward, see this piece by Doug Ross.

UPDATE:
Don Surber makes an interesting observation about the publication of the information from which this Times story was culled. If this information was so valuable, how come no one from the Times bothered to check it out and publish a story on it until the Friday before the midterm elections.

Now, the website repository has been taken down, and the lefty websites are all atwitter over the fact that the Bush Administration provided information that would help Iran with its weapons program (that Iran itself says it doesn't have). What information was provided? And if this information helps provide the Iranian with key details that further its nuclear weapons program (that the Iranians keep saying they don't have), what exactly would it be doing for the Iraqi program? Collecting dust? That's what we're supposed to believe?

Would anyone have known that the Iraqis were as far along on their reconstitution of a nuclear weapons program if this repository wasn't public? Does anyone think that the Iranians need our help more than we're providing simply by giving them time to work out the kinks in their program. The Iranians continue to obtain crucial information and technologies from China and North Korea, and Russia is running interference. Iran's participation in the AQ Khan network is also known.

So, if the documents are supposed to be giving the Iranians the bomb, that would mean that Iraq was already there (since these documents are the ostensible missing links to getting the bomb that Iran so desperately wants but denies having interest therein).

Tom Maguire points out that the Iranians also got a wee bit of assistance from the Clinton Administration, who provided details about the nuclear triggers. That piece of equipment is the part that enables the nuclear weapon to fire off correctly and efficiently (or else you end up with a fizzle).

James Joyner provides a nice capsule summary - along with reaction from both sides of the aisle. He doesn't think the story as significant as others, but is open to being convinced.

For those wanting to see how far down the rabbit hole this goes, check out the following bloggers: Flopping Aces, QandO, Decision 08, and Argghhh!

UPDATE:
Still further down the rabbit hole. Ray Robison, who has been translating these documents and publishing them on his website (and via Ed Morrissey) has more to say about the latest from the Times. He thinks that his contacting the IAEA might have triggered this reporting in the first place. Confederate Yankee has more.

UPDATE:
Still others wandering down the rabbit hole: Jim Geraghty, Hyscience, Coalition of the Swilling, Cold Fury, Fausta, Small Dead Animals, and Kobiyashi Maru.

UPDATE:
Jason Smith notes some of the documents that had been translated in the past, along with some photographic evidence accompanying one of the documents. If you spot Zarqawi, you'd be correct.

Technorati: UNSCAM, Oil for Food, and Kofi Annan, iraq, saddam hussein, and bush lied, united states, atomic bomb, and nuclear weapons, politics.

NYT Public Editor Admits Publication of SWIFT Story Wrong

Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, there’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments.

My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.

Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.

The source of the data, as my column noted, was the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. That Belgium-based consortium said it had honored administrative subpoenas from the American government because it has a subsidiary in this country.

I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws. Although data-protection authorities in Europe have complained that the formerly secret program violated their rules on privacy, there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken.

The basic facts of the situation have not changed in the intervening months. The Times published not only details of the SWIFT story, but that of the NSA program to track calls into the US from foreign sources.

It takes three months to realize that these stories undermine US national security? That there was no illegal activity on the part of the US government? Or that the NYT should have held the stories because of the beneficial data that these programs could provide in deterring and thwarting terrorism against the US and our allies?

UPDATE:
Quite a few folks are taking Calame to task for admitting his error. The problem is that it wasn't simply his error. It was the error of the editorial staff - up to and including Bill Keller - who believed that their judgment was better than that of the Administration to determine what was an important national security issue and what should be published for all the world to see.

They substituted their judgment for that of the elected Administration.

Calame admits he was wrong. Great. The damage has already been done. He admits that he let his passions get in the way of making the correct call on the SWIFT story. What else has he and the editorial staff at the Times gotten wrong because of their passions. It's revealing that he mentioned passion, because it underlines the serious problems at the Times, Washington Post, and other national media outlets who have run stories exposing national security programs based more on the gotcha principle than on sound judgment. Passion and politics over national security during a time of war when anyone following the counter terrorism news knows that tracking the money can lead to undercovering terror threats and improve national security for the US and our allies.

Ed Morrissey has more. Patterico wants Calame to resign. I disagree. Calame has owned up to his mistake, though three minutes late. Keller has not, and he was the one who made that decision to publish. Calame should resign because he appended his mea culpa to a completely unrelated story.

Dan Riehl suggests keeping Calame right where he is, admitting that the Times doesn't like Bush.

That his newspaper published the SWIFT story in a moment of gotcha journalism when there was no story there, and made details of that program more widely distributed, shows a lack of good judgment that is pervasisve at the Times.

Macranger thinks that this is laying the groundwork for even worse times ahead at the Times.

Others blogging: The Anchoress, Sister Toldjah, Michelle Malkin, JunkYard Blog, Tom Maguire, Discarded Lies, Eugene Volokh, and Greg Tinti.

UPDATE:
Powerline dissects the claims that the Bush Administration engaged in vicious criticism of the paper for its publication of the SWIFT program details. Perhaps Calame is confusing the Bush Administration for the legion of bloggers who castigated the Times for the publication of the NSA program, SWIFT program, and other details that could prove beneficial to terrorists and undermine US national security.

Don Surber notes that if the New York Times made a mistake, it reflexively had to blame Bush for the mistake. And Calame didn't place the blame for the fiasco on Keller et al.

Chapomatic is impressed at the skill Calame exhibits in burying the lede.

Secular Blasphemy notes the curious priorities of Calame and the NYT. Politics over national security.

Quite a few folks are noting the Emily Litella/SNL skit ('never mind') in relation to Calame and the Times' treatment of the SWIFT program along with questioning the timing (why did it take three months to realize the serious mistakes made in publication of the story): Flopping Aces, Lorie Byrd, The Squiggler, Carol Platt Liebau, Bill Quick, Newsbusters, Blue Crab Boulevard, Right Voices, and Rathergate.

Technorati: calame, swift, byron calame, nyt, keller, national security.

Missile Plot Sting Convictions

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted two Muslim immigrants of participating in a plot with a man who said he was helping plan a missile attack on a Pakistani diplomat in New York City in 2004.

The man to whom the immigrants were linked was actually an informant working with the F.B.I. in a sting operation against the two defendants, Yassin M. Aref, 36, an Iraqi refugee and the imam at an Albany mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 51, a Bangladeshi immigrant and the owner of a pizzeria here. The gestation of the case, with the government’s informant ingratiating himself with the men and initiating all the conversations about a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, led to claims of entrapment from Mr. Hossain’s lawyers during the three-week trial in Federal District Court.

“Obviously we had a couple of individuals that were prone to supporting terrorism,” United States Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby said after the verdict.

They had previously tried to latch onto the NSA wiretap story to allege that their rights were infringed. The duo had been arrested in Albany, New York in 2004 near my old stomping grounds.

Prior coverage: A Terror Plot Grows in Albany.

UPDATE:
The two face up to 25 years in prison. The jury found Aref guilty of 10 counts and Hossain guilty of 27 counts:

Yassin M. Aref, 36
Guilty on 10 counts, including -- money laundering --, providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization --lying to FBI agents about whether he knew Mullah Krekar, the founder of an Iraqi-based terrorist organization.

--Acquitted on 20 counts, including lying to the FBI about his ties to an Iraqi political party. ------Faces up to 25 years in prison.

Mohammed M. Hossain, 51
Guilty on 27 counts, including --money laundering, --providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization --attempting to provide material support to Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistani terrorist organization. ----- Faces up to 25 years in prison.

The convicts plan to appeal.

Here's a timeline of the events leading to the conviction.

Mike Pechar at Jawa Report has more.

NSA Eavesdropping Program Ruled Unconstitutional

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government's domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the Bush Administration disagrees with the ruling and has appealed.

"We also believe very strongly that the program is lawful," he said in Washington, adding that the program is "reviewed periodically" by lawyers to determine its effectiveness and ensure lawfulness.

The administration secretly instituted the program after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. It gives the National Security Administration authorization to secretly conduct wiretaps without a court order.

In a statement from the White House, Press Secretary Tony Fox said, "The program is carefully administered and targets only international phone calls coming into or out of the United States where one of the parties on the call is a suspected al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist.

The decision is 44 pages and is available here. I will comment more on this once I get a chance to read the decision.

What I found interesting was the list of Plaintiffs in this action:

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, based in Detroit. Plaintiffs included branches of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Washington and Detroit branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Greenpeace.

Greenpeace? How did they get mixed up with the ACLU, and CAIR? Politics makes strange bedfellows. You have a group allegedly dedicated to upholding the highest standards of the constitution, a group acused of maintaining terrorist ties, and a group dedicated to saving the wales. I understand the ACLU and CAIR challenging the NSA's actions. But why Greenpeace? What is their angle?

What I do know is that this decision weekens this country's ability to fight terrorisim. The government will appeal, and the loser of the appeal will appeal to the Supreme Court. Unfortunitaly, unless there is a stay of this decision, the decision takes effect immediately.

Diplomacy and the Hounds of Hell, Part XVII

Has Iran released Osama bin Laden's son so that he can go fight the Israelis in Lebanon? That's what one report indicates. Iran had been holding bin Laden's son, along with several other al Qaeda members.

As far as the diplomatic efforts go, Israel thinks that 15,000 troops would be needed for a multinational force to ensure the peace after Israel is through with Hizbullah. Tony Blair thinks that a Security Council resolution will be forthcoming in the next few days. I think he's wrong about that. The UN #2 guy behind Kofi Annan, Mark Malloch Brown, thinks that calling Hizbullah a terrorist group isn't helpful. Sorry, but has he or anyone else in the Secretariat actually read the UNIFIL reports that show Hizbullah repeatedly using UNIFIL positions to attack Israel and then shield themselves from Israeli fire, putting UNIFIL in the line of fire on purpose?

Iran, of course, thinks that the solution to the diplomatic crisis is to destroy Israel. And reports that Iran is working with North Korea on long range missiles shouldn't surprise anyone either. This is the Axis of Evil after all, and they're doing all that they can do and more considering that the UN and IAEA are completely useless in dealing with these crises. The logjam in the Security Council guarantees that no action will be taken against either country until it's too late.

Hizbullah keeps firing missiles into Israel and threatens to hit Tel Aviv if Beirut is hit. Well, Israel did hit Beirut again, and thus far no missiles have hit Tel Aviv, although sirens have gone off up and down Northern Israel. 26 rockets have hit Israel so far on Thursday. Israel has also pushed deeper into Lebanon.

The IDF continued to widen its operations in south Lebanon on Thursday. Thousands of soldiers – about six brigades – are operating in the area. Bitter battles are currently taking place in several places.

Among the units operating are Golani, Nahal, Brigade 7 of the Armored Corps, Engineering Corps and more – and all under heavy aerial cover.

Troops are operating in around 20 villages along the border, including some on the coast, within six kilometers of the border.

Israeli forces on the ground face a variety of threats, but the biggest one appears to be RPGs, which while called anti-tank weapons, are being used against infantry positions from a distance.

The term "antitank" is misleading; the missiles were originally designed to be used against tanks, but the IDF's Merkava tanks and upgraded armored fighting vehicles are capable of withstanding most missiles in Hizbullah's arsenal. But Hizbullah isn't using them only against tanks. The range of these missiles - up to three kilometers - and the force of their explosive charges make them ideal for attacking groups of soldiers and IDF positions from afar.

Hizbullah have been preparing for this war for six years, and the two main weapons they have been stockpiling have been the Katyushas and other rockets now being fired at Israeli towns and antitank missiles. The organization has thousands of Soviet-built Sagger, Cornet and Fagot antitank missiles, the French MILAN and the US-built TOW, all supplied by Iran and Syria. These missiles are usually fired by a two- or three-man team.

Over the last two weeks, the tactic used by many of the Hizbullah teams has been to avoid close-range combat, where IDF soldiers' high level of training gives them the upper hand. Instead, the Hizbullah men have been moving to positions high above villages and continuing to fire missiles at the IDF forces. Large stores of missiles were prepared in the hills in advance, for this eventuality.

Bloggers to check in with for daily updates are Blue Crab Boulevard, Carl in Jerusalem, Israellycool, Dave Bender, Meryl Yourish, Euphoric Reality, Pajamas Media, Hot Air, Jameel at the Muqata, Greetings from the French Hill, R'Lazer, and Live from an Israeli Bunker. Check back with them regularly for updates.

The uproar over the Qana incident isn't over either. And while there are some folks who think that there's no reason to believe that the photographers and journalists staged photos or otherwise lied about the incident scene, and some even claim that these are professional journalists, I can't help but wonder about just how professional they were when other journalists from Jayson Blair to Dan Rather were busted for lying, plagarizing, or otherwise pushing bogus stories that wouldn't stand the scrutiny of an objective observer. Claiming professionals wouldn't do such a thing isn't a valid argument when we see journalists repeatedly push their agendas over the facts. Has that happened at Qana. Based on the visual evidence thus far, and the grossly reduced body count, that still doesn't quite add up, I'd say that the journalists have quite a ways to go before the facts are all gathered, though the chances we'll ever know the whole story is practically nil considering that this was in the middle of Hizbullahland and who knows what evidence has disappeared in the interim.

UPDATE:
Seven Israelis have been killed by Hizbullah's rocket barrages today. Where's the UN outcry to call on Hizbullah to refrain from killing civilians. Don't hold your breath. They'll find a reason to blame Israel for those Israelis dying. Hizbullah says that there will be no ceasefire without an Israeli pullout. That's not going to happen. Hizbullah knows it. So does Israel. And there's no one to pressure Hizbullah to surrender either, and considering that Iran and Syria are pushing this conflict, all the pressure falls on to Israel.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), late of calling for immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and claiming that US Marines engaged in massacres in Iraq without proof or a trial, is now calling for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. This guy has never met a ceasefire or withdrawal he didn't fall in love with, despite the fact that a ceasefire is a losing proposition for the US, Israel, and the West in general and benefits genocidal terrorists and their state sponsors.

Mr. Murtha offered the analogy of U.S. fighting to defeat insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falujah: That battle was a military success, he said, but the inevitable destruction it caused alienated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, turning a tactical victory into a setback for the broader strategy of trying to bring peace to Iraq.

Fallujah was a mess because the US didn't engage in overwhelmning military force the first time they went through the city and it became a terrorist magnet. The insurgents still have their supporters in the city, regardless of what the US did there. Israel is facing a similar situation in that they're fighting in Hizbullahland, which was established by Hizbullah in the very areas that Israel vacated after its withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 and the UN and Lebanon failed to do what it needed to ensure Lebanon's territorial integrity and disarm the militias, including Hizbullah. Instead, Hizbullah turned South Lebanon into a weapons cache, all ready for use against Israel at the time and place of its choosing. That war restarted three weeks ago.

Are the New York Times reporters sympathetic to Hizbullah? Polipundit thinks so, based on this report, which ostensibly is about how Israel has swung from an air campaign to a ground campaign because of the difficulties in the air war. Of course the Times is short on their historians, who would have noted that the US did something similar in Iraq in 1991, 2003, and even in Bosnia. It's called preparing the battlefield, but the media thinks that it's a sign of difficulty or weakness on the part of Israel, combined with Hizbullah's strength.

This website thinks that we should reexamine Hizbullah's campaign in the context of a resistance movement against foreign occupation. Well, let's examine that a little closer. Israel wasn't going to bombard Lebanon or Gaza until Israeli soldiers were killed and/or taken into Lebanon or Gaza respectively more than three weeks ago. Israel didn't begin its military actions until Palestinian terrorists refused to hand over the Israeli soldier. The Palestinians response was to launch rockets. Israel then began its campaign in Gaza. Hizbullah similarly invaded Israel to kill and capture Israeli soldiers, and then has proceeded to launch more than 2,000 rockets into Israel.

Israel's response has been to go after the terrorists launching the rockets, and Israel cannot look at this solely as a resistance movement or a liberation movement, especially when Hizbullah, Hamas, and Fatah's operating goals and charters call for Israel's destruction. That's not a resistance movement, but movement of demicide and genocide.

UPDATE:
Today's death toll in Israel from the rocket attacks is now eight. Not so much as a peep from those folks who are so quick to condemn Israel for killing civilians in hunting down terrorists. Figures. Three Israeli soldiers were also killed in close combat in Lebanon. 15 Hizbullah were killed, and six were captured. Expect Hizbullah to say that the Israelis have the wrong guys.

Israel meanwhile, has resumed strikes on Hizbullah in Beirut.

HRW offers this helpful advice: Israel must differentiate between Hizbullah and civilians. Well, that would be all the more helpful if HRW told Hizbullah to wear uniforms and stop operating in and among civilians. The war crimes being committed here are not on Israel, but on Hizbullah, whose disregard of all human rights is such that they get a pass because even the NGOs realize that the terrorist groups simply ignore all rules of war.

Victor Davis Hanson, on the other hand, offers a more practical insight. This isn't just about the land. There's something far deeper than just land involved here. There's the cult of victimization perpetuated by the Islamists and Arab leaders, and Israel is the biggest target as to why the Arab/Islamic Middle East is so weak when compared to the West or Israel. It Shines For All notes that Lebanon is a center for distributing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel vitriol. Jed Babbin, meanwhile sees that Israel and the West must rid Hizbullah from Lebanon's political landscape, which is no easy feat.

Meanwhile, AJ Strata notes that Sid Blumenthal (who has never met a leak he didn't love), is blabbing about how the Israelis might be obtaining intel assistance from the NSA, and in the process alerting our enemies to the fact that they're under surveillance such that they might change tactics to shield their activities from US or Israeli eyes.

UPDATE:
Today's death toll from the Hizbullah rocket strikes is now 10. *crickets* chriping describes the sound from the UN on this, and the fact that UNIFIL positions have come under direct fire from Hizbullah, which also happens to be using their positions as cover for yet another day.

One rocket from the Hezbollah side impacted directly on a UNIFIL position in the general area of Hula yesterday evening, causing extensive material damage, but no casualties. Half an hour later, another rocket from the Hezbollah side impacted directly on the same UNIFIL position, causing additional material damage, but no casualties. Hezbollah also fired rockets from the vicinity of four UN positions in the areas of Alma Ash Shab, Marwahin, Tibnin, and At Tiri. There were two incidents of firing from the Israeli side close to a UNIFIL position in the general area of Kafr Kila.

Furthermore, an IDF tank fired machine gun rounds from the vicinity of a UN position in the area of Marwahin. UNIFIL strongly protested all these incidents to the Lebanese and Israeli authorities respectively.

Indeed, you'd be hard pressed to find a day when Hizbullah wasn't using UNIFIL positions for cover.

Ralph Peters finally has something positive to say about Israel's ground campaign kicking into high gear. He's wondering what took the Israelis so long. Now, he's concerned that they stop fighting too soon. Wars are never fought on schedule, and the Israelis beleived that they needed to prepare the battlefield with airstrikes on various targets throughout the country. Unfortunately, that included hitting civilians, but with Hizbullah dug into civilian areas, it was unavoidable. Now, the Israelis will force Hizbullah to fight or flee, opening up Hizbullah to airstrikes and ground fire.

Vital Perspective has what appears to be Israeli video from the Baalbek raid. Dan Riehl also noticed and has more background on the raid.

Pajamas Media has ongoing coverage.

UPDATE:
Hizbullah launched 130 rockets in 90 minutes, injuring 47 people (10 seriously). And for all the Palestinian talk about how Israel is evil and must be destroyed, Israel has permitted a large convoy of aid to go into Gaza. That's aid destined to a bunch of folks whose leaders call for Israel's destruction.

Nasrallah, meanwhile, had a few more things to say today:

In issuing the threat, Nasrallah offered his first opening toward diminishing the three-week-old conflict, which has taken more than 500 Lebanese lives and killed more than 50 Israelis.

"Anytime you decide to stop your campaign against our cities, villages, civilians and infrastructure, we will not fire rockets on any Israeli settlement or city," he said in a taped video statement broadcast on Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV and carried simultaneously on all other Lebanese and Arab satellite channels.

Never mind that Hizbullah started this war, he's hoping that if Israel backs off, he will decide when to stop firing rockets. Cute. Israel isn't going to buy that one, not when it's on the offensive in Lebanese territory hunting Hizbullah down. Oh, and he's got to speak with his fact checker:

"If you bomb our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity... We will bomb Tel Aviv," he said in a taped televised speech.

Now, unless he's referring to Jerusalem in the portion of this excerpt that was excluded, Nasrallah is incorrectly stating Tel Aviv as Israel's capital. Israel has considered Jerusalem its capital since 1948 and has been part of the Israeli Basic Law since 1980. Not that it matters all that much. A few Hizbullah rockets here, a few ones there, and pretty soon there'll be lots of dead and injured Israelis.

Just a day after France said that Iran was a stabilizing influence, France slammed Iran for calling for Israel's destruction. Stick a finger in the wind, and that's how you'll be able to figure out the French position.

Japan has said it wont participate in an international force in Lebanon. They're running out of countries that will even consider participating.

UPDATE:
Syria is telling the EU that they're willing to help rein in Hizbullah. That and two bucks will get you on the NYC subway. Is it surprising that Hugo Chavez is withdrawing Venezuela's ambassador from Israel? It shouldn't considering how chummy Chavez is with Ahmadinejad. Chavez calls Israel's acts of defense genocidal on the same day when Hizbullah kills eight civilians with its rocket barrages. Of course Chavez is simply parroting Ahmadinejad's line, which should give you an inkling of their future plans.

Meanwhile, Amir Taheri has a most provocative essay on the fight in Lebanon. It's more than just land, but about the future of the fight between the Islamist movements and the West.

Technorati: terrorism, fatah, Gilad, Shalit, Olmert, Eliyahu, Asheri, Ashri, Abbas, Rains, Summer, cavaliers, wrath, PRC, Hamas, Gaza, palestinian, Israel, hizbullah, hezbullah, hezbollah, lebanon, syria.

Shifting Priorities in War on Terror

Prevention of terrorist plots.

What a notion.

No one can know for sure whether an al-Qaida loyalist had what it took to follow through on a suspected plot to bomb Hudson River train tunnels. He had no explosives and no detailed plan, and isn't believed to have visited New York, authorities said. But U.S. officials said they weren't willing to find out.

''We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse (to) step in and prevent something from happening. That would be playing games with peoples' lives,'' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday as Assem Hammoud's arrest in Lebanon was being announced.

Policy makers and security experts said the bust illustrates a shift in U.S. counterterrorism policy that has played out in other recent high-profile cases, including the arrest of seven men suspected of wanting to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower.

Law enforcers, they said, are now willing to act swiftly against al-Qaida sympathizers, even if it means grabbing wannabe terrorists whose plots may be only pipe dreams.

''Before 9/11, the FBI was thinking in terms of criminal convictions,'' said Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

How do we do such a thing? Through surveillance of transnational communications. Through examination of certain kinds of financial transactions. Through the infiltration of jihadi chat rooms and watching communities where jihadis have operated in the past.

However, the NYT has specifically revealed significant portions of two of the three aforementioned programs to the point of rendering them useless. They revealed details of the NSA program to intercept communications between individuals outside the USA and those here in the US. They revealed the SWIFT program, despite the Administration pleading for Keller and the Times to not publish the story.

The usual suspects on the Left, liberal think tanks and the like (not to mention bloggers) think that the arrests, like those of the Miami Seven or the NY Terror plot suspects are only made known to highlight a threat and the actual criminal acts are deemed far less serious. Well, the alternative is for these individuals to continue to run amok and make good on their threats. The charges and convictions may appear to be less serious than the claims, but that has to do with the way that the justice system operates in convicting individuals based on what can be proven beyond a doubt. All the same, we know that the convictions are piling up:

Some of the suspected plots taken to trial in the past few years have appeared to be unsophisticated, but that hasn't hurt prosecutors in court.

In May, a Brooklyn man, Shahawar Matin Siraj, was convicted of plotting to plant a bomb in a Manhattan subway station, despite defense claims that he was a patsy coaxed into discussing a bombing by a government informant.

In April, a federal jury convicted a young farm worker in Lodi, Calif., of supporting terrorists by visiting an al-Qaida training camp during a trip to Pakistan. Prosecutors claimed Hamid Hayat was interested in attacking hospitals, banks and grocery stores, but they presented no evidence of actual planning of such assaults at trial.

In November, a young, outwardly pro-American Pakistani man was convicted in New York of trying to help an al-Qaida operative sneak into the United States, despite his claims that he wasn't aware that the acquaintance of his father's was a terrorist.

Nearly all of the defendants in these cases claim to have been entrapped or otherwise duped into making conspiratorial claims. We're already seeing just that in the Miami case, where the defense team is making precisely those claims.

New Details Emerging on Busted NY Terror Plot

Three suspects are being held by authorities in connection with the terrorist plot to attack New York area subways, tunnels, and PATH. Five others are still at large.

Federal and local law enforcement authorities identified the main subject of the investigation as Assem Hammoud, 31, a Lebanese man who was arrested on April 27 in Beirut and was still being held there. The locations of the other two men in custody were not revealed. The eight "principal players" planning the attack, the authorities said, had secured no financing, had gathered no explosives and had not visited New York — or even the United States — to conduct surveillance. At least one of the planners has been in Canada, the authorities said.

Officials said Mr. Hammoud would likely be tried in Lebanon and that no charges were pending against him in the United States.

Monitoring of Internet chat rooms used by Islamic extremists led to the arrest of Mr. Hammoud, according to Lebanese authorities. At least one American official said the members of the group had never even met one another.

"There was a lot of discussion, there was planning being done; but there was no indication that there was any movement toward these facilities," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "There is no indication that materials were secured or that specific reconnaissance was done."

Law enforcement had tried to keep the news of this story under wraps, but someone leaked the story to the NY Daily News. They had tried to do so until the remaining five individuals were in custody.

These terrorists were trying to carry out an attack around the 5-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And their ringleader had pledged his allegience to al Qaeda.

The major unanswered question is who leaked this information, why was it leaked now, and what this does for national security down the road. Some on the Left, want to believe that the leak was done to coincide with the 1-year anniversary of the London bombings. Another possibility is that the leaker was a leftist who wanted to undermine national security by exposing yet another secret program - monitoring of chat rooms where jihadis communicate.

What I continue to see is that there are partisan hacks in sensitive positions that are leaking classified information that affects national security and they're endangering US national security by their actions. Whether it's the NSA intercepts program, the SWIFT program, or details about an open and ongoing investigation into a terror plot to blow up NY area tunnels, all are based on leaks of sensitive and classified information.

The WaPo reports:

"This is a plot that would have involved martyrdom, explosives and certain of the tubes that connect New Jersey with Lower Manhattan," Mershon said. He called the threat "the real deal."

Hammoud was arrested before leaving for four months of training in Pakistan, and Lebanese investigators discovered details of a terrorist "project" on his computer that included a map "with a lot of details about New York," Lebanon's acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said in a telephone interview.

But authorities said there was no evidence that the plotters had taken any actions, such as buying explosives or sending money. They cast doubt on the feasibility of initial reports, which first appeared in the New York Daily News, that terrorists sought to flood Lower Manhattan and the Financial District by bombing tunnels.

There were conflicting assessments among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the significance of the alleged plot.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, speaking on the condition that their names and agencies not be identified because the FBI is the government's lead agency, discounted the ability of the conspirators to carry out an attack.

The Daily News, which broke this story, now reports that the terror plot was one of the reasons for increased security outside PATH stations, although I found the increases to be spotty (perhaps on purpose?)

The Daily News also appears to be walking back slightly from its focus on the Holland Tunnel:

The plot, as The News first reported, was to blow up underwater tunnels, break the walls, flood the tunnel, and possibly drown the subway system and lower Manhattan.

Mershon said the focus of the group was "specifically only the PATH tunnels" and not the Holland Tunnel, as The News reported. But several high-level sources said the plotters had eyed other tunnels in lower Manhattan, including the Holland Tunnel, before settling on the PATH trains.

Local politicians are using this terror plot to bolster their claims that homeland security funding needs to go to NYC and neighboring areas.

AJ Strata notes that the FBI may have already identified the leaker of this story to the Daily News.

Doug Ross finds that the NYT coverage is quite curious. A major terror plot designed to attack targets in the Times' backyard receives limited coverage a day after the story breaks, whereas other media outlets are running the story above the fold and front and center on their websites. What gives?

Others blogging: Sister Toldjah, Ed Morrissey, Confederate Yankee.

UPDATE:
Others blogging the tunnel terror plot bust: Sweetness & Light, Secular Blasphemy, and Gothamist

Posted to the following open trackbacks: Assorted Babble, Wizbang, Basil's Blog, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Point Five, Stuck on Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog.

Technorati: hammoud, tunnel terror plot, nyc, PATH, bloomberg, subways, holland tunnel.

Shutting Down OBL Search At CIA

Should this really surprise anyone? Well, it's a typical newsdump story that is released over a holiday to lessen its perceived impact.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

After all, the CIA has had a decade to track down Osama and has failed. Instead of trying to do the same thing over and over, another approach has to be taken.

I've got to believe one or more of the following is going on:

1) The CIA isn't actually shutting down the program, but is reconstituting it under a different program. The CIA is still looking for Osama, but the original program is being shutdown.

2) The CIA search team is being shut down and replaced by a search operated out of the NSA or DoD. Of the NSA or DoD, the Defense Department is the more likely scenario as they already have a task force designed to go after high value terrorist targets. Task Force 77 took out Zarqawi, and they've been tasked with the Osama mission as well. It's a joint forces operation, and they operate with their own intel gathering operations as well.

Others have found a couple of different rationales behind the shutdown. AJ Strata notes that the folks the Times spoke with aren't necessarily honest actors - they've got books and ulterior motives. Michael Scheuer for example. Blue Crab Boulevard thinks that this reorganization might be due to tunnel vision that developed within the group, and that meant the group lost focus of the big picture.

Security Watchtower sees this as a recognition that al Qaeda doesn't have the same capabilities that it once did.

The Sundries Shack finds that this makes sense because there's little use for yet another secret program that can be disclosed to the terrorists reading the New York Times.

Expect the usual suspects to scream and shout about the loss of focus, Bush lied, the war on terror is a sham, and the usual rhetoric that passes as fact with this news.

Removing All Doubt

Former President Jimmy Carter feels the need to speak out and claim that the government has too many secrets:

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) turns 40 tomorrow, the day we celebrate our independence. But this anniversary will not be a day of celebration for the right to information in our country. Our government leaders have become increasingly obsessed with secrecy. Obstructionist policies and deficient practices have ensured that many important public documents and official actions remain hidden from our view.

The events in our nation today -- war, civil rights violations, spiraling energy costs, campaign finance and lobbyist scandals -- dictate the growing need and citizens' desire for access to public documents. A poll conducted last year found that 70 percent of Americans are either somewhat or very concerned about government secrecy. This is understandable when the U.S. government uses at least 50 designations to restrict unclassified information and created 81 percent more "secrets" in 2005 than in 2000, according to the watchdog coalition OpenTheGovernment.org.

Somewhere in this mess of an op-ed there might be a solitary good point - namely that there are some areas of government operations there is too much classified information and undue red tape to obtain information via the FOIA. However, military secrets and national security matters are not among them.

The problem is that Carter's absolutely tone deaf when it comes to timing. We're in the middle of a global conflict against terrorists, who have already shown a willingess to kill thousands of Americans in our own cities.

This op-ed is published at a time when the media is getting lambasted for publishing details of secret programs designed to thwart terrorists from attacking this nation again. NSA intel programs and the SWIFT financial tracking program are both exposed for the world to see, and Carter thinks that more information needs to be open and accessible?

Let's put this in some context that Carter might remember. Iran just overran the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. The Iranians, in numerous acts of war, hold our diplomats hostage.

A military operation is put together. Do you think that the details of the operation should be published? After all, everyone knew that the US would try an assault to rescue the hostages. Since the world knew it was coming, there would be no harm if the NYT or the WaPo published some details about the preparations being made by the US Special Forces, Navy, and Air Force to deal with the situation, including details of how the US will know where to find the hostages, along with the numbers of those holding them.

No, I think Carter would have thrown a major hissy fit had the major media done that.

In fact, the President would have gone to the Times or WaPo and demanded that the paper not run the story at all. Perhaps the Times would hold back on the story until after the raid - and run the story later to flesh out the details of what went into planning the raid.

Now, instead of counselling for the prudent usage of classified information and even more reasonableness on the part of the media to refrain from publishing details of our counter-terror programs, Carter wants even more information released.

During wartime.

Others blogging: Sundries Shack, Macranger, and The Amboy Times.

UPDATE:
Still others commenting on Carter's latest op-ed: Yippee-Ki-Yay!, Tammy Bruce, and Welcome2theNow.

Ankle Biting Pundits notes that Carter wants to extend FOIA to private companies. That's right - Carter's proposing an even greater invasion of privacy than private entities are currently subject to. Where's the logic in that?

Jim Rose thinks that whenever Carter opines, do the opposite. That's pretty sound advice.

USA Today Walking Back NSA Wiretap Story

USA TODAY continued to pursue details of the database, speaking with dozens of sources in the telecommunications, intelligence and legislative communities, including interviews with members of Congress who have been briefed by senior intelligence officials on the domestic calls program.

In the adjoining article, USA TODAY reports that five members of the congressional intelligence committees said they had been told in secret briefings that BellSouth did not turn over call records to the NSA, three lawmakers said they had been told that Verizon had not participated in the NSA database, and four said that Verizon's subsidiary MCI did turn over records to the NSA.

USA TODAY also spoke again with the sources who had originally provided information about the scope and contents of the domestic calls database. All said the published report accurately reflected their knowledge and understanding of the NSA program, but none could document a contractual relationship between BellSouth or Verizon and the NSA, or that the companies turned over bulk calling records to the NSA.

Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database.

USA TODAY will continue to report on the contents and scope of the database as part of its ongoing coverage of national security and domestic surveillance.

Considering that those phone companies were threatening legal action against the paper for the May 11th report, this walkback isn't entirely unexpected - though quite late (and a Friday before long weekend news-dump at that). I think a big story is in there somewhere about how and why those people providing details about the program named BellSouth and Verizon - and why the paper ran the story without obtaining confirmation - by contacting the companies directly. Curious. Very curious.

UPDATE:
Others noting the USA Today walk back and the ongoing national security implications: Paul at Wizbang, Jeff Goldstein, and Pundit Guy.

AJ Strata who slams the paper again for providing yet more details about the program - and notes that AT&T specifically wrote that it would neither confirm nor deny its participation out of national security concerns,

Do Security Risks Ever Come Into Publishing Calculus?

As if publishing stories about the NSA surveillance program or the CIA secret prisons weren't enough, the New York Times is leaking word that Gen. Clark is preparing a draft of how troops could be drawn down from Iraq by the end of 2007. Do the media elites at the major newspapers and networks ever think for a moment that their stories might cause irreperable harm to national security?

Do they ever consider that these scoops based on leaks of classified information could put their own security at risk should a terrorist exploit the knowledge leaked on the pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times.

The short answer is no.

What better way to give our enemies a quick and painless victory than by setting out a date by which they only have to survive in order to win? By letting the world know that the US even has the contingency plan for the drawdown, the media emboldens and provides comfort to the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq (and elsewhere around the world for that matter) who know that in any conflict with the US that it is only a matter of time before the US leaves and if they can last long enough, they'll win by the US quitting the battlefield.

Ed Morrissey notes that the nature of this particular leak provides a relatively small group of potential leakers, which should make for an interesting encounter once the leaker is discovered. At the same time, he notes that this particular story lacks some specificity on the timing of various aspects of the withdrawal. Also, another possibility is that the Pentagon itself provided the information to shape the debate about pulling troops out in response to the corrosive debate on troop reductions, withdrawal, or the cut-n-run strategies.

Patterico provides the legal basis for prosecuting reports who publish leaked classified information. Scott Johnson has yet more details and legal considerations that can and should be used against the leakers and the reporters who leak the classified information - regardless of the rationale behind the leaks.

Michelle Malkin provides a series of reminders from another era, another war along with some modern takes.

Others noting the Times complete and utter disdain for US national security, and those of our neighbors and allies: Blue Crab Boulevard, Texas Rainmaker, Strategy Page, Hugh Hewitt, Wizbang, Blue Star Chronicles, LGF, Baldilocks, and Kesher Talk.

Anticipating the Miami Terror Cell Presser

Later this morning, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will give a press conference where he's expected to give more details about the terror cell that was arrested late yesterday.

Thus far, we know that seven people were arrested and the raids occurred on several locations, including a warehouse in Liberty City, Miami.

Things to look for in the press conference:
1) How the AG labels the group. Will he call them al Qaeda collaborators, wannabes, or independent jihadis who shared a common goal? My guess is that they'll be treated as independent jihadis who sought to emulate al Qaeda tactics and even tried to contact al Qaeda terrorists to further their plans.

2) More details about the targets. We know that the Sears Tower was at least one of the targets. What other areas were targeted? Buildings in Miami, including the federal building in downtown Miami are likely to be mentioned.

3) Background on the group. Who are these people and what were they doing before the FBI managed to infiltrate the group?

4) References to the domestic surveillance program. Expect some reference to the NSA program of eavesdropping on transjurisdictional communications (between the US and foreign countries), which tipped off law enforcement about potential terror ties).

This last part is going to be interesting, especially in light of the newest NYT revelation that the US is examining financial data to look for terrorist money laundering and money transfers. The program was instituted shortly after 9/11 as part of the Patriot Act. In other words, it wasn't a super secret program, but part of the changes made to federal law meant to improve law enforcement's capabilities to catch terrorists trying to secure or transfer funds within the US. Financial institutions were already required to flag certain kinds of transfers - such as those above certain dollar amounts and other suspicious activities. Macranger has more.

Meanwhile CNN is reporting that this latest plot was meant to conduct attacks on a scale greater than 9/11.

Here's a copy of the indictment. The seven defendants conspired, confederated with, and agreed to provide material support to al Qaeda. The plot included destroying FBI and other federal buildings in the continental US. The ringleader of this particular cell is Narseal Batiste, "who allegedly told a federal undercover agent who he thought was a member of al Qaeda that he was organizing a mission to build an Islamic army to wage a jihad in the United States."

The document says that Batiste "recruited and supervised individuals in order to organize and train for a mission to wage war against the United States government, which included a plot to destroy by explosives the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois," the nation's tallest building.

Others noting the Miami terror bust: AJ Strata (who I hope gets his technical difficulties fixed soon - he's on my morning must read list) and James Joyner looks at the network tv coverage and finds some interesting priorities.

UPDATE:
As was expected, CAIR is trying to get ahead of the curve and has scheduled a press conference of its own.

CAIR National Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed said: “The American Muslim community is extremely concerned about these disturbing reports. We stand with local and national law enforcement authorities in seeking to keep our nation safe and secure.”

Ahmed added that CAIR is urging police departments nationwide to step up patrols near mosques and other Islamic Institutions to help prevent any possible backlash resulting from these arrests.

Maybe if CAIR did more to out the jihadis in its midst we wouldn't have to worry so much about the possibility of a backlash. The fact is that quite a few mosques around the country are home to Islamists and jihadis who preach openly about causing mayhem and spreading Islam via jihad. Some talk of da'wa. Moderates who see and hear this have to choose congregations that aren't involved in such talk - and are reluctant to speak out for fear of harm to themselves from the violent elements.

The text of AG Gonzales' press remarks is here:

The seven men who were arrested – Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyblenson Lemorin and Rothschild Augustine – were named in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Miami. The indictment charges four counts:

conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, namely al Qaeda; conspiracy to provide material support and resources to terrorists; conspiracy to maliciously damage and destroy buildings by means of an explosive device; and conspiracy to levy war against the Government of the United States.

These individuals wished to wage a, quote, “full ground war” against the United States. That quote is from the investigation of these individuals, who also allegedly stated the desire to, quote, “kill all the devils we can.” They hoped for their attacks to be, quote, “just as good or greater than 9/11.”

The defendants – five American citizens, one legal permanent resident and one Haitian national in the United States illegally – are expected to make appearances at U.S. District Court in Miami today.

As always, it is important to remind you that the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.

The indictment alleges that Batiste, the ringleader of this group, intended to recruit and supervise individuals to organize and train for a mission of war against the United States. Batiste and his co-conspirators allegedly attempted to obtain the support of al Qaeda to achieve their goals. They also took steps to carry out their plans for violent attacks on this nation. Those steps included seeking out uniforms and weapons, conducting reconnaissance, and taking bayat, the oath of allegiance to al Qaeda. We know this because an individual they thought was a member of al Qaeda was present at their meetings. In actuality he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force.

If convicted, the defendants in this case each face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison on the charges of conspiracy to provide material support or resources. The defendants also face a maximum of 20 years in prison on each charge of conspiracy to destroy buildings by use of explosives and conspiracy to levy war against the United States.

I would assume that the illegal alien would be deported at the conclusion of the matter, regardless of the outcome. It will be interesting to see the kind of evidence that the government produces in support of this case.

UPDATE:
Hot Air has a good roundup.

QandO notes that there are lots of similarities between the Miami 7 and the Canada 17.

Malkin has a history of jihad in the US.

Others blogging: Assorted Babble, Sister Toldjah, Stuck on Stupid, Ed Morrissey, Dumb Ox,

Posted to: Mudville Gazette and Basil's Blog.

UPDATE:
KLo at the Corner makes a similar observation to mine about CAIR's response to the indictments:

Just heard part of the CAIR news conference on the Miami cell. An official instructed the media to "stop calling these individuals Muslims." If I were a CAIR official, I'd be more concerned with why one of the members of the cell indicated — I'm getting this from the indictment — he was building an "Islamic army."

UPDATE:
From the some folks just don't quite get it department, Mahablog thinks that this whole thing is overblown and that this somehow undermines the flypaper strategy. Maybe they'd know that while most flies eventually end up stuck in the flypaper, some flies do manage to evade the flypaper for a stretch of time. The terrorists that seek to do harm to this country are no different. Many of the jihadis went to Iraq and Afghanistan to try and fight the US - and most have died in the process. Some continue to try and get into position to attack the US here at home, but that doesn't mean that the flypaper strategy is wrong. The flypaper strategy is only part of a larger campaign against the jihadis. We'd be remiss not to make sure that terrorists don't try to do something here at home while we're eliminating them overseas.

From Chat Room to Major Terror Plot Bust

The Canadian terrorist plot began in a chat room. It developed into a full-blown plot to acquire the means and methods to carry out a terrorist attack, the targets of which are not being revealed by law enforcement. AJ Strata notes that the plot in Canada quickly grew into an international investigation because of links to the US. The NSA can monitor the Canadians without worrying about invoking constitutional issues. However, once they began picking up US links, we cross over into the world of FISA, constitutional protections, and transnational legal issues.

This is the exact scenarion I have been espousing in the NSA-FISA debate, where the NSA’s monitoring of overseas activities ensares Americans who contact the terrorists. Now, previously to 9-11 this information on US based terrorists would NOT be shared with anyone inside the US. That was custom - not law - and can be traced back to the Church committee in 1976 and the origins of FISA. And this is pure suicide. After 9-11 the NSA would pass the leads to the FBI to follow up (see this post for evidence this is the case). And when the FBI determined that the lead was of value, that is when they took the case to FISA. Which balked because the judges felt the custom of not using NSA generated leads was somehow enshrined in the law - when it wasn’t. That is why the judge who resigned claimed the NSA ‘tainted’ (read polluted) the FISA process.

AJ believes that FISA was invoked in this case, and that the dots were being connected. Thankfully, the RCMP was up to the task of taking down the Canadian cell as they were in the process of acquiring the ammonium nitrate, which is a key component of a fuel oil bomb.

The US portion of the investigation resulted in the arrests of two people several months back, and even then noted the Canadian connection.

The local Toronta imam wants people to believe that the arrested individuals weren't interested in violence. They have an interesting way of showing that, considering the weapons recovered, along with the intention to obtain and use ammonium nitrate as part of a bomb.

Meanwhile, more arrests are expected. We're also learning a few more details about the sting operation used to arrest the 17 individuals. Undercover Mounties were going to provide the three tons of ammonium nitrate to the group.

The arrests were made Friday and Saturday after the group acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate from undercover Mounties in a sting operation, the Toronto Star has reported. The fertilizer can be mixed with fuel oil or other ingredients to make a bomb.

That is three times the amount of fertilizer used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, McDonell said. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killed 168 people and injured more than 800.

"For various reasons, they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida," Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with CSIS — Canada's spy agency, said Saturday.

Officials said the operation involved some 400 intelligence and law-enforcement officers and was the largest counterterrorism operation in Canada since the nation's Anti-Terrorism Act was adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Star reported that the investigation began in 2004 with the monitoring of Internet chat rooms.

"We've been investigating them for some while and it got to the point where we could no longer control the risk," McDonell told NPR on Monday.

A prayer leader at a storefront mosque west of Toronto said several suspects prayed daily there but never spoke of hurting others.

"I will say that they were steadfast, religious people. There's no doubt about it. But here we always preach peace and moderation," Qamrul Khanson, an imam at the one-room Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, said Sunday.

The 40-50 Muslim families who worship at the mosque were astonished, he said, to learn that police had arrested 12 adults, ages 19 to 43, and five suspects younger than 18 on Friday and Saturday, charging them with plotting an attack in southern Ontario. Two Americans who met with the suspects also are in custody.

One reason that terrorist cells are able to conduct attacks is because they don't let others know what their true intentions are. They will infiltrate a community and act normally or otherwise try to blend in. They aren't going to say that they intend to blow stuff up or openly declare jihad. So, the statements that the group didn't make comments relating to hurting others rings hollow.

After all, its not like people suspected that a clown, a nurse, yuppie, church leader, or law student would turn out to be a serial killer (John Wayne Gacy, Charles Cullen, Denis Rader, or Ted Bundy respectively). The deadly nature of these threats is their ability to not attract attention to themselves.

Others blogging: Cassandra at Villainous Company, Cold Fury, Don Surber (on the Left's reaction to the arrests), and Blue Crab Boulevard.

UPDATE:
Western Resistance notes that the mosque had been warned before about the militant Islamist beliefs expounded by one of the arrested individuals:

The Globe & Mail reported that the oldest man to be arrested, 43-year old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, had used a small mosque in a strip mall in Mississauga, Toronto, to recruit young and impressionable Muslims into his brand of extremism. This mosque was the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education.

The director of the Mississauga Muslim Community Centre, Fahim Bukhari, said that Jamal was only a volunteer there, who did cleaning and occasionally ran errands. Bukhari said that various individuals had warned the management of the mosque about Jamal's views. One of these was the local Liberal MP, who often prayed at the mosque because his uncle had founded the establishment.

The probe is being expanded to seven countries.

Meanwhile, there are folks like Lew Rockwell who think that this is a simple case of entrapment of some boobs who were lured into a plot to buy ammonium nitrate because the Mounties used a sting. Yeah. I'll buy that one. Considering that among those arrested were a computer programmers and health sciences graduate, a firebrand imam about whom the local mosque was warned of his pontificating, and that the adults were fully predisposed to carrying out terrorist attacks, the fact that this group would find themselves entrapped is dubious at best.

Glenn Penner has a personal connection to the group arrested:

This particular arrest struck close to my home in that at least four of them had gone to school with my children and one of the older suspects lived not far from my home. This fact, while shocking, is really not that surprising though. One of the young men, my oldest son told me, had been nicknamed "The Terrorist" by some of his classmates back in high school. Another had written in his graduation yearbook last year, "La ilaha illallah... do you really believe in it? You do? Then prove it... Before us there were many... after us there will be none... we are the ones... Allahu Akbar..."

And yet again, Muslim leaders in the Greater Toronto Area are going out of their way to try to convince the populace (and maybe themselves) that violence is not Islamic and that these men, if guilty, are not really Muslims.

How tiresome to hear to say the same old, well-worn excuses and rhetoric being bandied about that we have been hearing since 9/11.

Others noting the ongoing investigation, media coverage, and the wildly divergent take on the Canadian bust: Two Minute Offense, Dr. Sanity, California Conservative, Jeff Goldstein,