Right Wing Nut House

He may be an evil, thuggish brute but no one could ever accuse Osama Bin Laden of being dumb.

Actually, it really doesn’t take that much for an enemy of the United States with internet access to figure out how best to divide America; echo one side’s talking points.

And Osama has the liberals down cold. This is from his statement offering us a “truce” of some kind, the quid pro quo not as yet clear:

“We do not mind offering you a long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to,” he said. “We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America.”

Kos couldn’t have said it better.

Translation: Bush’s tax cuts and eeeeevil Haliburton are at fault. The only question will be is the left smart enough to recognize the fact that Osama knows them so well that he plays them like a violin whenever he releases one of these tapes.

How long before we here some mindless lefty out there prattling on about negotiating with Bin Laden? After all, the thug sounds reasonable, doesn’t he? And he sure has a point about “those with influence” getting rich under McChimpybushitler. Gosh, maybe we could end this war by sitting down with al Qaeda in a great big circle, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya…or maybe Imagine.

Seriously, I would not be surprised if in the next 24 hours we don’t hear some loony lefty actually proposing that we believe the galoot and try and negotiate with him. My money is on some Hollywood type like Babs Streisand or maybe George Clooney.

As for the rest of the tape, I see that Glenn Reynolds thinks that Osama offering us a truce is a sign that we’re winning. I suppose that would be one interpretation but I think that it’s more likely that Osama is toying with us, trying to pull our strings in anticipation of doing something really nasty. Perhaps not an attack here but more likely in the Middle East. And I think he’s whistling past the graveyard by saying our security measures haven’t thwarted him. It’s been 4 1/2 years and by all accounts, we have stopped a couple of his plans from coming to fruition. That must gall him something awful. Also, by bragging that our security measures haven’t stopped him, he elbows his way into the current debate on the NSA intercept program. By saying its not working, maybe he wants to get the left to help him in dismantling the program. They certainly seem willing enough in that regard.

It takes a special kind of stupidity not to realize that you are being used by the enemies of your country. Deny it if they can, the facts are clear; Osama knows how to play our left for his own advantage. It remains to be seen whether or not they will recognize that and not play along with him.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to a Yahoo News Photo of Osama with a caption that refers to the mass murdering thug as a “dissident.” Wonder what they would have used to caption Hitler?

Also, Michelle does her usual fine job in supplying links for the blogswarm.

A gathering of wise men (and woman) has been called by the President ostensibly to discuss the situation in Iraq:

It will be an unusual sight on Thursday in the Roosevelt Room of White House, and deliberately so: President Bush will engage in a consultation of sorts with a bipartisan collection of former secretaries of state and defense.

Among them will be several who have left little doubt that they think Mr. Bush has dangerously mishandled Iraq, ignored other looming crises, and put critical alliances at risk.

The meeting was called by the White House, which sent out invitations just before Christmas to everyone who once held those jobs.

The invitees were told that they were being asked to attend a briefing on Iraq and other issues. It was unclear, one recipient said, “how interested they are in what we are thinking.”

This could be, as some invitees have speculated, window dressing for the President’s continuing efforts to sell the Iraq War to the American people. Or, it could be something much more ominous.

Following on the heels of last weekend’s leak to Der Speigle about our contingency plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, this gathering could be one more signal we are sending to the Iranians that we are deathly serious about preventing them from building a nuclear weapon. Since Iran is going to be on the agenda, the President may want to gage what kind of support he can expect from Democratic heavy hitters if he feels it necessary to escalate the crisis, probably within a few weeks.

Key to this strategy will be two individuals respected by the liberal press and Democratic members of Congress; former Secretary’s of State Madeline Albright and Colin Powell.

Powell would probably support toughening our stance in the UN and perhaps even some kind of sanctions regime. Albright is another story. Architect of what she considered a successful nuclear containment policy in North Korea (she blames Bush for the collapse of the inspections in 2002), it is doubtful she would advocate anything outside of that being offered by the European Union’s “Big Three” - Britain, France, and Germany. Those three countries have been negotiating with Iran for almost a year about trying to safeguard their nuclear program and keep the mullahs from processing enough fissionable uranium to build a bomb. The Iranians, of course, have been playing the Europeans for fools as they blow hot and cold on negotiations, all the while continuing to expand their enrichment efforts. The latest offer by the EU - to allow Russia to enrich the uranium - has been rejected by President Ahmadinejad who continues to bait both Israel and the United States, daring us to attack him.

In fact, Ahmadinejad recently made it plain that he feels negotiations with the EU is a waste of time:

In a closed-door meeting with parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, Ahmadinejad said that under former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami Iran had tried to appease Europe.

“On foreign policy, Ahmadinejad said that during the last sixteen years, we adopted a detente policy … but in practice this policy had not achieved anything for Iran,” Kazem Jalali, a member of the committee, told the official IRNA news agency.

By the end of Khatami’s second term in 2004 “we were distanced from the goals of the (1979 Islamic) Revolution and our activity in the Islamic world had been somewhat diminished,” Jalali quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

(HT: LGF)

Meanwhile, the Iranians appear to be scouring Europe for the hardware to construct a working nuclear device:

The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country’s weapons programmes.
Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with “import requests and acquisitions … registered almost daily”, the report seen by the Guardian concludes.

The warning came as Iran raised the stakes in its dispute with the United States and the European Union yesterday by notifying the International Atomic Energy Authority that it intended to resume nuclear fuel research next week. Tehran has refused to rule out a return to attempts at uranium enrichment, the key to the development of a nuclear weapon.

All of this adds up to a brewing crisis that will require the Administration to make a decision; do we acquiesce and accept an Iranian fait accompli on their building and deploying a nuclear weapon or do we try and use every means necessary to prevent it?

There are things short of bombing that we can do. The UN Security Council would be useful except that both Russian and China - who have both recently signed lucrative commercial deals with Iran - would be expected to veto any sanctions regime or military action contemplated by the SC. And there is the possibility that we could initiate a naval blockade. This would be extraordinarily risky because Iran has been armed by both the Chinese and the French with modern anti-ship missiles. And in the duck pond of the Persian Gulf, our ships would have only minutes notice before one or more of those missiles were upon them. While our anti-missile defense is the best in the world (Aegis Cruisers are designed to protect the battle group in just such a circumstance) they would probably need more time to be effective. I daresay the Navy would be extremely reluctant to undertake any blockade that would put so many ships and men at risk.

It certainly looks like a job for the Air Force. That is, if the President has the courage to buck the left, the MSM, and probably a majority of Democrats not to mention 9/10 of the rest of the world.

And what of all these respected national leaders called to the White House to discuss Iraq and “other matters?” The Democrats in the group (and probably some Republicans) think that Bush has ignored them for 5 years and why should they pull his chestnuts out of the fire now? It’s a fair question and here’s a fair answer; because it is vital to our survival as a nation that on the issue of preventing Iran from getting its hands on nuclear weapons, we speak with one voice. In fact, perhaps the only way to prevent military action against Iran is to convince Ahmadinejad that there is no chance - zero - that they will escape military action by trying to play one faction off of another here in America. We must convince him that he has no choice but to submit to some kind of international inspections regime that will be stringent enough to give us confidence that they can’t circumvent it and build a nuke anyway.

Otherwise, it will be a bombing campaign with risks that I spell out here.

Will factionalism be the death of us all? A significant portion of the answer to that question may be answered tomorrow at a meeting of some of the wisest heads in the foreign policy and defense establishment.

Fallout continues from the New York Times hit piece on the NSA intercept program as now the defense lawyers for terrorist suspects want to know if their clients were caught up in the government’s digital dragnet:

Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency’s domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration’s most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

To say that this was a predictable outgrowth of the New York Times leaking the top secret NSA intercept program is an understatement. In fact, since the Times sat on the story for a year and thus had ample time to examine all the potential consequences of publishing the information, one can only come to the conclusion that the paper’s editors wanted to throw a great big monkey wrench into the Administration’s efforts to not only monitor terrorists but prosecute them as well.

As David Ignatius points out in this Washington Post Op-Ed, the spin given to the NSA program was designed to put it in the worst possible light while omitting pertinent facts that would have given much needed perspective to the story:

We know only the barest outlines of what the NSA has been doing. The most reliable accounts have appeared in the New York Times, the newspaper that broke the story. Although the headline has been “warrantless wiretapping,” the Times accounts suggest the program actually was something closer to a data-mining system that collected and analyzed vast amounts of digitized data in an effort to find patterns that might identify potential terrorists.

As I pointed out here, the use of the inflammatory term “wiretapping” is a misnomer. The act of wiretapping is illegal without a warrant and involves actually listening in to the conversations of the person being targeted. The intercept program instead probably scooped up massive amounts of data using computer algorithms to identify key words and voices and then may have cross referenced any “hits” with information in private data bases like credit card companies and airlines. How this amounts to “wiretapping” in any but the most partisan mind is a mystery.

Ignatius also outlines the problems for the Fourth Amendment purist critique of the program:

The legal problems, as Arkin suggests, involve the dots — what digital information can the government legitimately collect and save for later analysis, and under what legal safeguards? As it trolls the ocean of data, how can the government satisfy legal requirements for warrants that specify at the outset what may only be clear at the end of the search — namely, specific links to terrorist groups? These and other questions will vex lawyers and politicians in the coming debate, but they aren’t a reason for jettisoning these techniques.

The Times story answers these questions by showing how terrorist defense lawyers will exploit the leak of the classified program:

At the same time, defense lawyers in terrorism cases around the country say they are preparing letters and legal briefs to challenge the N.S.A. program on behalf of their clients, many of them American citizens, and to find out more about how it might have been used. They acknowledge legal hurdles, including the fact that many defendants waived some rights to appeal as part of their plea deals.

Government officials, in defending the value of the security agency’s surveillance program, have said in interviews that it played a critical part in at least two cases that led to the convictions of Qaeda associates, Iyman Faris of Ohio, who admitted taking part in a failed plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge, and Mohammed Junaid Babar of Queens, who was implicated in a failed plot to bomb British targets.

David B. Smith, a lawyer for Mr. Faris, said he planned to file a motion in part to determine whether information about the surveillance program should have been turned over. Lawyers said they were also considering a civil case against the president, saying that Mr. Faris was the target of an illegal wiretap ordered by Mr. Bush. A lawyer for Mr. Babar declined to comment.

By seeking this kind of information, the lawyers for suspected terrorists will see to it that as many details as possible about the program come to light. Many of them have already proven that they will flood the courts with motions, some of them frivolous such as the motion filed on behalf of a Guantanamo inmate alleging that the prison library didn’t carry a certain book. If allowed to do so, the lawyers could tie these cases up for years.

This brings us back to the questions surrounding the intercepts themselves and the reasons for not seeking warrants in the first place. As I pointed out yesterday, the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was giving the Administration a hard time regarding many of the requests for warrants. In fact, after going some 22 years with never turning down or even modifying a warrant request, starting in 2002, the FISC court flatly turned down 4 or 5 warrants outright and modified 179 others. The reason may have to do with the mechanics of how the government goes about getting a warrant from FISC.

An amendment to the law authorizing the FISC contained in the Patriot Act stipulated that at least 3 judges on the panel would have to live within 20 miles of Washington. This may reflect problems in the past with expediting the process of getting a warrant. And the FISA act mandates that the government present its case to one judge only - they cannot take “two bites of the apple” by simply walking it down the hall and presenting it to another judge.

Why are these two facts relevant. The judge most likely to be “on call” and therefore the one most likely to preside over the bulk of the warrant hearings was none other than the judge who recently resigned from the FISC court, James Robertson.

And herein may lie the reason why the Bush Administration decided that FISA needed to be bypassed in order to safeguard the country.

Robertson, a holdover on the FISC from the Clinton era, has a resume that reveals not only strong liberal (and Democratic Party) credentials but also a purists approach to the Bill of Rights.

In fact, Judge Robertson was in the forefront of the civil rights movement in the 1970’s, certainly a noble calling for which he should be commended. He served as Chief Counsel of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He was also President of the Southern Africa Legal Services and Legal Education Project in the 1980’s. For political connections, he was employed by Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering which is one of the top Democratic party law firms in Washington.

An impeccable pedigree for someone serving on one of the most liberal District Courts in the Country - the US District Court - District of Columbia. But is this someone with the judicial temperament to serve on a court that by its very nature skirts a very fine line between civil liberties and the needs of government to protect us from attack?

I am sure Judge Robertson is an honorable man. But could a myopic view of terrorism and the terrorist threat have hindered the Administration in its efforts to prevent terrorist attacks? An attitude that terrorists are criminals may have in fact permeated most of the FISC court in which case, the judges may have been looking for justification for warrants based on probable cause regarding criminality rather than preventing terrorist attacks.

This may be where the real divide exists between those who see the searches as a gross violation of the Constitution and those who believe it was necessary to safeguard America. It may very well be that the FISC court was not able to make the intellectual and psychic transition from a court charged with oversight of government actions regarding criminals to one whose mission was to allow the government significant leeway in its efforts to prevent another attack. And if this were the case, the Administration’s actions in bypassing the FISC court make sense.

Whether it was truly necessary remains to be seen. But having a civil libertarian like Robertson sitting on a court where speed was of the essence and lines were blurred between terrorists and criminals could not have been conducive to getting the most out of the NSA intercept program.

Please forgive my rambling, nearly incoherent examination of the issues surrounding recent revelations regarding the Administration’s efforts to combat al Qaeda in America by using the NSA to intercept and analyze calls from American citizens. My problem should be shared by all since we know so very little of the technical aspects of the NSA intercept program.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the left from wringing its hands and screaming “impeachment” and “dictatorship” at the top of its lungs. They can safely be ignored in any serious treatment of the issues involved because, let’s face it, they are not serious people. They are a joke to all but the most self deluded, self righteous, and self destructive. Not only are they not serious about this issue, but as they have made abundantly clear for more than 3 years, they are massively unserious about the War on Terror. They do not believe we are at war nor do they believe al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are the existential threat that they have proven to be over the years. Every move made to counter the threat has been criticized with such screeching obscurantism that listening to them has become something of an exercise in migraine management. They have become a splitting headache that nothing can relieve.

There are indeed thoughtful critics of this program - people with the best of intentions who question the entire domestic surveillance apparatus in its totality and wonder if indeed, the President of the United States has gone too far in trying to protect us. They base their arguments on the law and on precedent - two things for which yours truly has not the knowledge nor the training to comment on intelligently. However, like you I have my own thoughts about human nature and the relationship of citizens to their government. And this leads to a question the answer to which may ultimately decide which way I come down on this issue.

Did the President bypass the FISA court because it made his job easier or was it necessary in order to get the maximum benefit from the intercept program?

The consequences inherent in that question should be obvious. Either it was or wasn’t necessary for the President to order the warrantless searches. If it wasn’t necessary, there may in fact be grounds for impeachment - or at least a serious examination of the issue. If it was necessary, the argument should be over. For in his role as Commander in Chief, no one can seriously argue that the President is precluded from doing what is necessary to protect the country. If I’ve gotten anything from the Constitutional arguments raging across the internet, it is that one salient point. Every wartime President has used the powers and prerogatives available to him. And herein lies one of the great strengths of the Office; it is both the strongest and weakest Constitutional office in government.

The President is not only Chief Executive who “executes” laws passed by Congress, he is also Head of State as well as Commander in Chief. The arguments that took place at the Constitutional Convention over the powers of the President were long and bitter. Jeffersonian democrats believed that a Chief Executive was unnecessary, that Congress was perfectly capable of executing the laws they promulgated. Federalists were having none of that argument having just endured several years of rudderless government under the Articles of Confederation which had no separate office of Chief Executive and substituted instead a Committee of Congress to exercise executive powers.

The fascinating denouement to this debate was the unspoken realization by all that the person who would be exercising any expanded powers of the Chief Executive was sitting in that broiling hot room with them. George Washington had come to Philadelphia that muggy summer reluctantly because he knew that the biggest improvement that could be made to the Articles of Confederation was the creation of a single, powerful office of Chief Executive. And Washington knew darn well who the delegates would want to fill that office. This colored the debate over executive powers dramatically as every time a proposal was made to expand the powers of the Presidency, delegates would glance over at Washington as if to reassure themselves that the old general would shoulder the burden of office reluctantly and therefore, would not usurp the authority of Congress or the people. Washington’s self conscious reticence about exercising power was legendary especially after he became one of the few conquering generals in history to lay down his sword and return home without becoming a dictator.

Reassured by the fact that Washington would be the first President, the Convention adopted language that made the Presidency the most flexible of Constitutional offices and unlike any other, relied on the character and decency of the office’s inhabitant to practice self restraint in light of the enormous power granted by them.

Washington did not disappoint. He was extraordinarily careful, realizing more than most that any action he took would be seen as precedent for others to follow. Hence, he wrestled mightily with the exercise of his first veto which occurred on an apportionment bill. The reason he vetoed it was because he thought it unconstitutional - a judgment he believed was the only basis to veto any law Congress passed. His decision to step down from the office after two terms was also taken to make the point that the United States was a country governed by laws not be men.

The point is that both the Constitutional Convention and Washington himself were gravely concerned about the exercise of executive power, seeing a strong executive as a threat to individual liberty and to congressional prerogatives. And over the years, the Supreme Court became the chief brake on the expansion of those powers as successive courts have sought to define the most ill defined office spelled out in the Constitution. They have tried to place limits - with varying degrees of success - on what a President can legally do, even during a time of war.

They have tried to make the President’s job more difficult. Generally speaking, this is a good thing. By placing obstacles in the President’s path to unfettered power, a rough balance is maintained between the various branches of government. In the case involving NSA intercepts, the obstacle the President must navigate is the FISA court, a 1978 invention of Congress that was created to safeguard American citizens’ Constitutional rights from the emerging technical wizardry becoming available to government that allowed unprecedented intrusiveness by government agents into private communications.

But the world tends to move much faster than Congress and the Court’s ability to keep up with it. If anything has become clear regarding our efforts to keep track of al Qaeda for the last 15 years, it is that they have a disturbing ability to circumvent or defeat our efforts to glean information from them through national technical means. In short, their ability to stay hidden has put pressure on our system of checks and balances because the law has not kept up either with the technical abilities of government to snoop or our enemy’s ability to avoid detection.

And here’s where both thoughtful critics and defenders of this intercept program part company. The basic argument against the President’s authorizing this intelligence operation for warrantless searches is that it was unnecessary, that either the law could have been changed or the warrants could have been effected retroactively. The White House has said that the law couldn’t be changed without taking a chance that the entire program would have been compromised (a pretty good bet given how many blabbermouths there are on both sides of the aisle). And as far as retroactive warrants the White House seems to be all over the lot, first saying there was no time to get the warrants and then saying that the President had the authority anyway.

The truth is we just don’t know whether the technical details of the program will reveal that the White House did not have time to retroactively get warrants for searches or whether they just decided to bypass the FISA court because it was easier in the long run and didn’t want to take the chance that the court would deny them the opportunity to listen in on communications they felt were vital to national security.

Did the White House have cause to believe the FISA court would give them trouble? This article in the San Francisco Chronicle reveals some of the problems the Administration had with the court in the past:

Government records show that the Bush administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court’s approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The court’s repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to begin secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an authority on the security agency that intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.

What is fascinating about this article is that it reveals what may be the single most important reason for the warrantless searches; that the FISA court was more interested in the rights of people who were in direct contact with terrorists and suspected terrorists than in the safety and security of the American people:

…[T]he Bush administration had difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people within the United States who were communicating with targeted al Qaeda suspects inside the United States.

“The court wouldn’t find enough ‘probable cause’ to give the Bush administration wiretap warrants on everybody that talks to or e-mails the terror suspect that they were trying to target,” Bamford said.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches from five presidential administrations since 1979.

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court’s operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court’s activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that “no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority” submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered “substantive modifications” took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available.

Again, without knowing the technical details of the program it is difficult to make a value judgment on the legality of it, but it would appear that the Administration’s concerns about obtaining warrants from the FISA court were indeed well founded. In fact, one could say that given the information contained in those Justice Department reports, it appears that the FISA court was either operating in a vacuum or was unaware that the United States of America was at war. Either way, the obstacles placed in the way of the Administration’s ability to spy on al Qaeda - a stateless group who uses a complex network of operatives, sympathizers, financiers, and fanatical soldiers - puts the NSA intercept program in an entirely different light. Given that the most seemingly innocuous contact could lead to preventing a massive attack on the US, it is beyond comprehension that any contact no matter how innocent appearing it may be should not have been grounds for immediate action by the government, including a warrantless search.

Where you come down on this issue then will depend on whether you believe we are in a war for survival or in a battle with stateless criminals who don’t pose a real threat to our destruction. It seems clear that the FISA judges believe the latter.

In short, it appears that the reason for the warrantless searches was not because it made the President’s job any easier. The reason could very well have been the inexplicable foot dragging by FISA which necessitated the President’s employment of broad powers exercised in his role as Commander in Chief. Dangerous? Yes. Illegal? A qualified no. I and most others would hope that this program would not be necessary. By the same token, we could all wish this war were not necessary either. But given that our enemies will not vouchsafe us the second, it may be that we must reluctantly embrace the first.

In a way, one of the basic criticisms by the left of the President’s actions is absolutely true; he couldn’t trust the FISA court. Was this one more example of Washington partisanship run amok? We’ll probably never know. But given the exigencies of war and the options open to the President when he made his decision to authorize the warrantless searches, it will be difficult to prove that the President’s actions were not justified.

Several media aspects of the NSA intercept story - and the political use of them - have been bothering me for days.

First, has anyone else noticed the strange juxtaposition of the words “massive” and “wiretapping” whenever a columnist, reporter, or blogger writes about the NSA intelligence operation? From what has been released so far (and this may change as more revelations from the top secret program are eagerly released by the press) it appears that a very, very small number of Americans have had their communications directly monitored and that apparently all of these people (with the exception of a very small number of people who were mistakenly caught up in the dragnet) were either in direct contact with the enemy or the enemy’s sympathizers and agents. In other words, the “massive” number of communications that have been intercepted have never been examined by human eyes or ears. No human being has been aware that they even exist.

Can a computer violate our Fourth Amendment rights?

More to the point, is this wiretapping?”

The legal website NOLO defines wiretapping thusly:

Eavesdropping on private conversations by connecting listening equipment to a telephone line.

Please note the term “listening equipment.” The intercept program cannot itself “listen in” on conversations or read emails. By its very definition it only snags very specific communications and places them aside for later analysis. And, from what this article implies, it appears that any study of the intercepts is largely confined to traffic analysis - a useful tool in uncovering terrorist networks.

So far, there has been precious little released that would fill in the gaps of our knowledge of how this program actually works which would lead any sane person to the conclusion that people who are either criticizing and defending this program are blowing smoke out of a hole where the sun don’t shine. About all that can be said for certain is that the only thing “massive” going on is exaggeration in the numbers of people who have actually been “wiretapped.”

I asked a similar question regarding the FBI-DOE program to monitor private businesses and houses of Muslim Americans for a specific radiation signature that would indicate the presence of nuclear material.

It is legitimate to question the legality of programs that actually snoop on people – physically read their email or listen to their phone conversations. But if your telephone number is caught up in some kind of digital dragnet being carried out by the NSA only to be sloughed off and forgotten within minutes after it becomes clear that you’re not a terrorist, what’s the big deal?

Reading liberal commenters (and even some libertarian absolutists) I am worried that, somehow I’m missing something important in this debate. Are we paying too high a price for our liberty to have our telephone number or email intercepted by a dumb brute of a computer in service to the government? I am willing to listen to arguments to the contrary but how can this be a threat? Take the following into account and then tell me where this “grave threat” to civil liberties is occurring with this program:

* There is no evidence that political opponents of the Administration have been targeted.

* There is no evidence that anti-war protesters are having their emails and phone calls monitored in any way by this program (domestic surveillance may be another issue altogether).

* There is no evidence that the program is being used to blackmail anyone.

* There is no evidence that the government is using this program in any way, shape, or form to gain any kind of a political advantage for the Administration.

* There is no evidence that innocent Americans are being deliberately targeted by this program. Even critics acknowledge that the mistakes made by NSA employees when purely domestic to domestic communications are intercepted are immediately corrected.

If the real argument here involves a slippery slope - that giving the government an inch they will take a mile - I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. If this were indeed some kind of massive intrusion by government into the private lives of innocents that would be one thing. But the program just seems to make sense. Al Qaeda is based overseas. In order to carry out attacks against us, they have to send their operatives over here to do so. And if the terrorists (who have access to professional expertise in both Pakistani and Saudi intelligence) are constantly trying to defeat our efforts to discover their plans by using sophisticated technical means and other methods of concealment, doesn’t it stand to reason that such a program is vital and necessary?

I realize this post has been all over the map on this issue. I wholeheartedly agree that some aspects that have been revealed so far are open to debate as to both their legality and constitutionality. But until someone can show me how this is 1) a “massive,” intrusive violation of our Fourth Amendment rights and 2) that there has been large scale “wiretapping” of innocent Americans, I am going to hold my fire and await further information before either outright condemnation or support.

As it stands now…let’s wait and see.

As we all know by now, it is illegal and an impeachable offense for a President to authorize listening in to Americans who are in conversation with al Qaeda terrorists overseas without a warrant if that American citizen (or illegal alien who resides here) happens to be located on US soil when that conversation takes place.

This means, of course, that we would only be able to listen to one side of the conversation - the side that originates overseas. I wonder what kind of information we’d get under this kind of intelligence gathering program invented by the Democrats?

TERRORIST: Peace be upon you, Ali. Is everything in readiness?

ALI: (Unable to record. Subject is on American soil. Agent must get FISA warrant)

TERRORIST: That is wonderful news! When will be the glorious day?

ALI: (Unable to record. Subject is on American soil. Agent must get FISA warrant)

TERRORIST: Excellent! The infidel dogs will die by the thousands! What route will you take to the spot where you will martyr yourself for Allah?

ALI: (Unable to record. Subject is on American soil. Agent must get FISA warrant)

TERRORIST: God willing, your plan will be successful. Farewell, Ali. God is great!

Yes, yes I know. Retroactive warrants are possible under FISA. And a conversation like this could never take place in a million years, right? Right?

Sure hope so. By the way, it may interest you to know that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has told us that all al Qaeda communications are assumed to be monitoried and therefore don’t last longer than 15-30 seconds.

Not very much time to decide whether or not to eavesdrop on innocent Americans exchanging pleasantries with al Qadea thugs.

Just a thought…

Like his other major addresses given over the past month, the President’s oval office speech last night was a calm, measured and fairly accurate portrayal of the situation in Iraq and the consequences of giving in to the Democratic party’s defeatism and surrender tactics. It was delivered in typical Bush style - which is to say that it didn’t put anyone to sleep but was hardly the kind of rousing, “Rally ‘Round the Flag” stemwinder that is probably needed to change the political dynamic and actually garner more support for his policies with middle of the road Americans. These all-important voters who have mostly abandoned the President on Iraq are the reason the Democrats have been smelling blood in the water all these months and will continue to work to undermine the war effort.

Unlike his last oval office speech in 2003 when the President enjoyed substantial support among independents for the war, today that number has fallen to around 37%. And to make matters worse, Rasmussen’s rolling average over the last month has shown a depressing steadiness to the President’s support from these “unaffiliated” voters.

Basically, this means that the President’s rising approval ratings are the result of Bush winning back Republicans who had strayed off the reservation and not indicative of a sea change in public attitudes toward Iraq.

While it is true that the President’s information offensive has been going on for only a month, the White House is probably asking itself what else they can do to reverse the decline in the support of independents before next year’s Congressional elections. The arithmetic is all too frightening. As it stands now, for every independent voter who makes a decision to vote Republican based on the President’s and the party’s support for the war, the Democrats will get two independents to vote for their candidates. Therein lies electoral disaster for Republicans in the Senate and perhaps even in the House, although the number of people who weight their vote based on a Congressional candidate’s foreign policy views is far fewer in House races.

Is there a way to win back enough independents to avoid a Republican debacle at the polls next November? The answer is a qualified “yes.” In the Presidential election of 2004, Bush received 48% of the independent vote with voter identification by party dead even at 37%. Today, with only 37% of independents supporting the President and party identification at a worrying 47% Democratic to 43% Republican, the President must not only find a way to win back at least some of those middle of the road voters but also energize the Republican party base so that enough conservatives go to the polls and keep Republican Senate candidates - especially in the south - from being swamped by a Democratic surge.

What the President must do is change the narrative on Iraq to reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground rather than the fairy tales being spun by the Democrats and their allies in the MSM. Recently, there has been some very small moves in this direction as a few media outlets have begun to compare the tone and tenor of their past coverage of the war with evidence that all is not as they have been reporting. The steady progress in reconstruction along with the obvious strides being made by the Iraqis in the political arena (and American-Iraqi military successes in slowly beating down the insurgency) have bestirred some in the mainstream press to grudgingly change the constant drumbeat of negativity that has permeated their coverage for more than 2 years. Ed Morrissey:

The Sunni participation puts the last of the building blocks in place for the establishment of a consensus democratic republic. The reporting of the Times indicates that the American media might finally start recognizing what will shortly become obvious to all whether they do so or not: that a free Iraq exists, thanks to an administration that steadfastly refused to listen to the Chicken Littles of the opposition and the whiners of the Exempt Media at home. The war may finally have turned the corner in the only place it could be lost — here in America.

It’s not enough, of course. While the Democrats have concentrated on undermining the President’s credibility on the war - with a great deal of success - they have either failed to realize the real world consequences of their defeatism or, more likely, could care less as long as it brings them victory in 2006. There follows a logical progression here; if the real story of what’s going on in Iraq can begin to be told, the President’s credibility will rise. If that occurs, the Democrats may be faced with an election day debacle of their own. Those same independents who have abandoned the President could return in large enough numbers to deliver a stinging rebuke to the Democratic party on election day 2006.

Several factors on the ground in Iraq could help the President and Republicans regain some momentum:

* Several insurgent groups lay down their arms and join the political process

* The Iraqis have a comparatively uneventful time of it in forming a new government

* Zarqawi is either killed or he announces a move out of Iraq to somewhere more hospitable, the former being more likely.

* A large and noticeable fall off in civilian casualties over several months.

* A rise in secularism with demonstrated unity between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds.

* Well publicized successes in fighting the insurgency by the Iraqi military.

* More public support from Arab governments for Iraqi democracy.

I would hope that two or three of these things happening between now and the 2006 election would secure a Republican triumph and, more importantly, drive a stake through the heart of the insurgency and hasten the day when our sons and daughters can come home.

UPDATE

Some react to the speech:

Michelle Malkin live blogged the address and, in something one rarely sees from a liveblogger, she gives the talking head response immediately following the speech.

Think Progress published a copy of the speech even though it was embargoed. Their explanation?

[Ed note: We’ll start respecting embargoes when they start telling the truth.]

Um…does anyone else see that as petty and childish? Par. For. The. Course.

Is Glen Reynolds being cynical?

BUSH DOUBLES DOWN: I just watched Bush’s speech. Nothing new there for anyone who’s been paying attention to the speeches he’s been giving over the past couple of weeks. But one big thing struck me: In this national televised speech, Bush went out of his way to take responsibility for the war. He repeatedly talked about “my decision to invade Iraq,” even though, of course, it was also Congress’s decision. He made very clear that, ultimately, this was his war, and the decisions were his.

Why did he do that? Because he thinks we’re winning, and he wants credit. By November 2006, and especially November 2008, he thinks that’ll be obvious, and he wants to lay down his marker now on what he believed — and what the other side did. That’s my guess, anyway.

Paul Mirengoff nails it:

He expressed respect for those who oppose the war, admitted to some mistakes, and conveyed how wrenching it is to be a war president and how determined he is to win the war. Bush also put the focus where it should be — on where we go from here. He has a coherent answer; the Democrats don’t.

Most lefty bloggers are too busy wetting their pants over the NSA story to write much about the speech. Does this mean that they care more about safeguarding the rights of terrorists than fighting and winning the war?

Of course not, don’t be silly. That would be unpatriotic and defeatist not to mention suicidal.

The latest poll from CNN-Gallup confirms what many on the right have been saying for months; that the best salesman for the government’s Iraq War policies is the President himself:

As President Bush prepares to make his final speech on the strategy for winning the war in Iraq, a recent poll indicates that fewer people are opposed to the U.S. presence there, but they don’t think the U.S. is winning the effort.

Forty-eight percent of those polled said they thought it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq, as opposed to 54 percent of those polled last month. Fifty percent said it was not a mistake, compared to 45 percent last month.

Despite an apparent surge in approval for sending troops to Iraq, those polled said they don’t believe that the U.S. is winning the war. Of those polled, 49 percent said neither side is winning the war, 13 percent said the insurgents are winning and 36 percent said the United States is winning

Clearly, the renewed effort by the President in the last month to fight the public relations battle for his Iraq policies is paying dividends. This despite a curious attempt by most media outlets to bury the President’s speeches or worse, cherry pick quotes to highlight the negatives. There was the flap over the President’s admission that mistakes had been made in the reconstruction efforts, especially underestimating the strength of the insurgency. The latest tidbit the press has latched onto has to do with the President’s comment following his speech on Monday that “30,000 Iraqis” had died since the war began. Not surprisingly, the press jumped on that number and automatically assumed the President was talking about civilian deaths. Not so. Here’s the question and answer (via Mudville Gazzette):

Q: Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I’d like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We’ve lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

Several media outlets ran with a story headlining 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, which of course, is not what the President said. Be that as it may, other aspects of the poll were also interesting:

Thirty-eight percent said some troops should be brought home, while 25 percent said troop numbers should remain static. Twenty-six percent said all troops should be withdrawn.

Many of those polled said they believe the U.S. has the ability to win the war, but won’t.

Asked if they thought the U.S. will win the war in Iraq, 46 percent said yes, as opposed to 65 percent who said the U.S. can win.

The 46 percent is made up of 25 percent of those polled who said the U.S. will definitely win the war and 21 percent who said the U.S. probably will win. Forty-nine percent said it would not win.

American ambivalence about our ability to win the war is a direct reflection of the “one dimensional” reporting on the conflict that some in the MSM are finally starting to address. The surest sign of this is a flood of stories over the last 72 hours about the new poll of Iraqis that show a surprising 75% believing that there lives are going well with another 68% believing that things will get better in the next year. The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and others who in the past have been predisposed toward negativity have actually allowed a ray of hope to seep into their coverage. And the reason for this has to be the attitude of the Iraqis themselves toward the upcoming vote. With many insurgent groups giving grudging promises not to interfere with the vote tomorrow as well as the Sunnis apparently willing to throw themselves with some measure of enthusiasm into the electoral process, these media outlets could hardly do anything else.

Ed Morrissey also notices the slight shift in the tone of coverage and wonders if we’ve “turned the corner” on media attitudes toward Iraq:

When the Gray Lady sees fit to start reporting that even the Sunni of Saddam’s hometown have committed themselves to democracy in the upcoming elections, it might indicate that defeatism has finally jumped the shark…

[;;]

The Sunni participation puts the last of the building blocks in place for the establishment of a consensus democratic republic. The reporting of the Times indicates that the American media might finally start recognizing what will shortly become obvious to all whether they do so or not: that a free Iraq exists, thanks to an administration that steadfastly refused to listen to the Chicken Littles of the opposition and the whiners of the Exempt Media at home. The war may finally have turned the corner in the only place it could be lost — here in America.

Not to put a brake on Mr. Morrissey’s optimism but here’s a survey that appears in today’s New York Times compiled by the government that is a little more sobering in its implications:

DESPITE President Bush’s articulation of a new strategy for victory in Iraq, the American debate remains polarized. An increasing number of critics argue that the war is already lost and that we may as well withdraw, while others claim we are clearly headed to victory, and Americans would know that if only the press would stop emphasizing the negative.

The State of Iraq: An Update Our judgment, based on data compiled by the American government, the news media and independent monitors, is that trends in Iraq do not support either of these extreme views. Things are in a state of continual turmoil, with many hopeful signs but also some deeply disquieting realities. In the good news category, one could place the real, if belated, progress in training Iraqi security forces, the greater availability of telephone and television services, renewed economic growth and more children in school (reading much better textbooks).

On the negative side, electricity and oil production remain below the levels of the Baathist regime, even as Iraqi expectations for improvement soar. Among Sunni Arabs, who stand to greatly increase their representation in Parliament after tomorrow’s elections, passive support for the terrorists is all too common. And the insurgency remains as strong and deadly as ever.

One thing that jumps out of the chart that accompanies the Op-Ed is that fully 80% of the Iraqi people expressed the desire to see the Americans leave “in the near term.” This is consistent with other polls that show the Iraqis want the Americans to leave as soon as possible. What the poll doesn’t do is ask the obvious follow-up question; under what conditions should the Americans leave? Here’s what the ABC News poll found:

Specifically, 26 percent of Iraqis say U.S. and other coalition forces should “leave now” and another 19 percent say they should go after the government chosen in this week’s election takes office; that adds to 45 percent. Roughly the other half says coalition forces should remain until security is restored (31 percent), until Iraqi security forces can operate independently (16 percent), or longer (5 percent).

It appears that the Iraqis are as ambivalent about the presence of American troops in their country as Americans are.

And it just goes to show you that there are polls…and then there are polls.

Oh that ubiquitous purple finger! How Howard Dean and the defeatist party he leads must absolutely loathe it. When raised high in the air by smiling Iraqis following the exercise of their democratic rights as citizens, it must give the Chairman of the Democratic party and his groveling cohorts purple nightmares, a sea of fingers pointing directly at them while laughing at their timidity and faithlessness.

Be still my heart, but the Washington Post is even amazed at how quickly the Iraqis are picking up on this politics thing:

As Iraqis nationwide prepare to go to the polls for the third time this year on Dec. 15 — this time for a new parliament — candidates and political parties of all stripes are embracing politics, Iraqi style, as never before and showing increasing sophistication about the electoral process, according to campaign specialists, party officials and candidates here.

“It is like night and day from 10 months ago in terms of level of participation and political awareness,” said a Canadian election specialist with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a group affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party that is working to ease Iraq’s transition to democracy. The institute, which has provided free campaign training to more than 100 Iraqi parties and describes its programs as nonpartisan, granted a reporter access to its employees and training sessions on the condition that no one on its staff be named.

I would say that the Iraqis are getting the hang of this election thing quite nicely. Of course, some of them have got to learn to put down the guns first:

In several cities in the Kurdish-populated north on Tuesday, demonstrators believed to be loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party burned down several local headquarters of a rival party, the Kurdistan Islamic Union, whose members recently withdrew from a KDP-led election coalition. Four party workers were reportedly killed in the incidents.

Because of this, several candidates and party workers said, they cannot apply much of the advice they get from foreign election workers. At one recent session, candidates were encouraged to knock on doors or approach people in restaurants or cafes to talk about issues. They were told to write letters and send them to everyone they know, outlining their platforms.

“You could get killed . . . and we don’t have mail there,” said Khalid Madhia, a Free Iraqi Gathering candidate from Fallujah. “But it is much easier this time. Before, we were running while we were hiding. We don’t have to hide anymore.”

And some of them seem to be taking things just a little too seriously:

Across town, hundreds of black-clad followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr — who decried balloting 10 months ago as something imposed under American occupation — beat their backs with chains and stomped across a large poster of former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi. Sadr’s political wing has joined forces with the alliance of Shiite religious parties that leads Iraq’s current government and opposes Allawi’s secular movement.

It appears that even the holier than thou al Sadr knows a good photo op when he sees it. Somehow though, I can’t see too many moonbats marching in the streets of San Francisco practicing self-flagellation for Howard and his Merry Band of Surrender Monkeys.

As the President said, progress is being made. And the remarkable way in which the Iraqi people have enthusiastically embraced not only the concept of democracy but the practice of it as well is truly inspiring. It demonstrates to all but the most willfully self deluded that there exists in the human heart - all human hearts - an overwhelming desire to live as free people. Their concept of what freedom is may be radically different than ours. But the realization that the highest and most noble aspirations in their culture and society cannot be obtained without political freedom is the first step toward justice and peace.

This is the answer to the naysayers who view the sectarian, regional, tribal, and clan differences in Iraq as an insurmountable obstacle to the democratization of that country. Yes there are enormous, almost disheartening problems that need to be overcome. But just think of where these people started.

Just three short years ago, the kind of political back and forth going on right now in Iraq was unheard of. Such contrariness would more than likely have given you a free pass to one of Saddam’s torture chambers. But to see Iraqis of all religious, political, and economic stripes carrying on a political campaign with a gusto that appears to be a combination of American style slick and Iraqi style down home country is both hugely entertaining and wonderfully inspiring. The al Sadr gambit of marching his militiamen down the street, whipping themselves with chains may strike us as ludicrous. But I’m sure that many Iraqis don’t look it like that. Whatever political message al Sadr is trying to impart is coming through loud and clear and you can be sure he wouldn’t be doing it unless he believed it would garner him a few thousand votes.

Votes, not bullets. A little more than a year ago, this same Moqtada al Sadr was shooting at our boys in Najaf. Today, Najaf is a bustling city, bursting at the seams with economic activity. President Bush yesterday:

As soon as the fighting in Najaf ended, targeted reconstruction moved forward. The Iraqi government played an active role, and so did our military commanders and diplomats and workers from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Together, they worked with Najaf’s governor and other local officials to rebuild the local police force, repair residents’ homes, refurbish schools, restore water and other essential services, reopen a soccer stadium, complete with new lights and fresh sod. Fifteen months later, new businesses and markets have opened in some of Najaf’s poorest areas, religious pilgrims are visiting the city again, construction jobs are putting local residents back to work. One of the largest projects was the rebuilding of the Najaf Teaching Hospital, which had been looted and turned into a military fortress by the militia. Thanks to the efforts by Iraqi doctors and local leaders, and with the help of American personnel, the hospital is now open and capable of serving hundreds of patients each day.

Najaf is now in the hands of elected government officials. An elected provincial council is at work — drafting plans to bring more tourism and commerce to the city. Political life has returned, and campaigns for the upcoming elections have begun, with different parties competing for the vote. The Iraqi police are now responsible for day-to-day security in Najaf. An Iraqi battalion has consumed [sic] control of the former American military base, and our forces are now about 40 minutes outside the city.

A U.S. Army sergeant explains our role this way: “We go down there if they call us. And that doesn’t happen very often. Usually, we just stay out of their way.” Residents of Najaf are also seeing visible progress — and they have no intention of returning to the days of tyranny and terror. One man from Najaf put it this way: “Three years ago we were in ruins. One year ago we were fighting in the streets … [Now] look at the people shopping and eating and not in fear.”

The President’s critics rightly demand specifics regarding progress in Iraq. This would seem to fall under the category “pretty damned specific.”

Of course, progress in Iraq will not be measured in weeks or months but years. And unfortunately for the President and the Republican party, it is unlikely that major progress will follow our American cycle of bi-annual elections which will allow the Democrats to continue to scream “quagmire” while gleefully planning to undercut any Administration claims of progress by pointing to the violence that al Zarqawi seems to be able to ratchet up and down in order to manipulate the dim-witted Dems.

Thankfully, the President seems determined to see this through regardless of the electoral consequences to his party. While there’s no doubt that he cares what happens to Republicans at the polls and will continue to do his utmost (finally) to bring home to the American people what is really going on in Iraq, he apparently is not going to bend on the larger issues of artificial timetables and drawing down our forces before the situation on the ground warrants it.

This coming election in Iraq will be one more large step down a very long road toward a peaceful and just society. The fact that all factions in Iraq seem to be participating with an enthusiasm lacking in most western countries should underscore just how precious a commodity democracy is and why it is important to embrace those who are willing to die in order to enjoy its benefits.

The Iraqis are going to give an answer to Howard Dean and the Democrats who believe the war is unwinnable next week. And it will be one great big purple finger raised in triumph - the triumph of hope over despair. They could give another finger to the Dems but, from what I’ve heard, the Iraqis are much too polite to participate in such a vulgar display.

UPDATE

John Cole has the picture and caption of the day comparing Howard Dean with al Sadr’s fanatics.

The attack would probably come without warning of any kind.

You could be in your car driving to work one morning when, in a blink of an eye, American civilization would be destroyed. The first inkling you would have that something was amiss is when your car suddenly died. You turn the key to start it again and…nothing. The engine doesn’t even turn over. The next thing you would notice is that the exact same thing has happened to everyone else on the road. You reach into your pocket and grab your phone to call your boss to tell her you’ll be late and find to your horror that the phone is completely dead - not only no signal but the phone itself is gone.

If you’re driving in a city you would see that all the stoplights are out as well. The fountain in front of the building across the street has stopped pumping water. You see a child is crying because his battery operated toy has stopped working. You try to access your laptop to see if you can catch some news and can’t even turn it on.

Perhaps you run into the bank to try and get some cash. The bank employees are frantic. The back-up generators that were supposed to supply electricity in the case of a power outage aren’t working. Later, you find out that your account records have been wiped along with trillions of gigabytes of data stored in millions of other computers around the country.

This is just the beginning. When you finally make it home you realize that you have no electricity, no water, no refrigeration - nothing. Your battery operated radio doesn’t work. In short, you have been propelled back more than 100 years in time and, for the foreseeable future, must live as your great grandparents lived.

Except you can’t live that way. Our entire industrialized civilization has become dependent on electricity and micro-electronics. The interconnectedness of systems - all of which have failed - have made our society possible. Without them, we can’t get food to grocery stores or water to faucets or electricity or natural gas or heating oil or any of the other absolutely vital services and materials that life itself depends on.

And to top it off, everyone else in the United States is in the same boat as you are. Dozens of commercial aircraft have dropped out of the sky killing thousands. Trains carrying freight and people have run off the rails killing many more as well as causing toxic spills in dozens of communities across the country. Communications, transportation, and most economic activity suddenly and completely ceases.

This nightmare is the result of a relatively small (10 kiloton) nuclear device exploded approximately 300 miles above Kansas. The 2 million degree heat generated by the nuclear chain reaction lasts for only a millionth of a second or so. But then as it cools, that thermal radiation becomes gamma rays which interact with the atmosphere and the earth’s magnetic field and generates an electrical field a million times more powerful than anything on earth.

Called Electromagnetic Pulse or EMP, this kind of an attack is more than a possibility. The military has known since the 1960’s about EMP and what could happen to electronics in the event of a nuclear attack. At that time, since any nuclear device that went off on American soil would be relatively close to the earth - probably not more than 10,000 feet above the target - the EMP effects would be highly localized. This is because EMP effect is line of sight or horizon to horizon. The higher the blast, the wider the effect so that when detonated at approximately 300 miles above the center of the country, the effect is total.

There was a half-hearted effort back in the 1980’s to “harden” both military and commercial systems that would be vulnerable to the EMP effect. The military did a pretty good job of hardening much of their equipment although of late they have come to depend on commercial systems here at home for communications. But the private sector did precious little. In the event of such an attack, banking, insurance, and many other kinds of corporate records would be irretrievably lost. Some of the larger banks have made an effort to back-up data and store it below ground in vaults. Larger insurance companies have done the same. And the regional Federal Reserve Banking centers has also taken some steps to protect their records. But it is doubtful whether your local First National has gone to the trouble of building a Farraday Cage to protect your account.

A recent study of the threat posed by an EMP attack was published last summer. The fact that it came out the same day as the 9/11 report guaranteed its anonymity. Called the “Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack”, it was chaired by the esteemed scientist Dr. William R. Graham and included a short but highly impressive list of top American scientists, engineers, and military specialists. What they discovered should chill your blood:

The alarming answer is that delivery of an EMP weapon requires less than state-of-the-art technology. A rocket simply has to carry a nuclear payload to altitude and detonate it. Aiming can be very general, unlike targeting an installation or even a city. Alarmingly, such missiles exist, engineered by North Korea and sold to countries like Iran, Syria, and – we fear – soon to Venezuela.

The missiles do not have to be launched from land. They could, with rather conventional engineering modifications, be launched from the deck of a freighter off-shore from the American coastline. Terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda already possess a modest fleet of merchant ships. Both Iran and North Korea are furiously working to develop deliverable nuclear weapons. In the opinion of many, it is not a matter of if we are attacked by EMP but when. America has a surfeit of capable enemies – communists, dictators, and terrorists – and they form a deadly connection committed to our demise.

North Korea has not only sold Taep’o-dong-1 missiles to Syria but has apparently sold the plans for the more advanced Taep’o-dong-2 to Iran. That version, many experts believe, is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. And Iran is already testing an even more advanced missile, the Shahab 3 which some analysts think they have deliberately detonated in the atmosphere it test its capability as an EMP weapon:

The radical Shiite regime has conducted successful tests to determine if its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, can be detonated by a remote-control device while still in high-altitude flight.

Scientists, including President Reagan’s top science adviser, William R. Graham, say there is no other explanation for such tests than preparation for the deployment of electromagnetic pulse weapons – even one of which could knock out America’s critical electrical and technological infrastructure, effectively sending the continental U.S. back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.

And the truly frightening thing about the threat is that there is nothing we can do about it at the present time.

One thing we do have is a little time. One doesn’t just plop a nuclear warhead on top of a rocket and send it on its way. The technical complexities involved in designing a nuclear warhead are quite daunting. So even if Iran will soon have a nuclear device (and even if North Korea already has one) many analysts believe they are a few years away from being able to place them on top of rockets.

Needless to say, this should give a little more urgency in our efforts to disarm the mad mullahs in Iran. One way or another, the Iranians must not be allowed to construct a nuclear device. If they do, the possibility that the weapon would end up in the hands of a group that could destroy our civilization while keeping Iranian hands clean so as to preclude a retaliatory response is just too great.

UPDATE: 12/8

A couple of things.

First, Doc in the comments gives a scientific basis for why the kind of EMP attack I’ve outlined above is impossible. This is extremely puzzling to me because the link I provide in the article details the findings of a commission to study this threat that has concluded not only is it possible, but likely.

Here’s a story (via Drudge) that also outlines the threat.

Frankly, I am at a loss as to how to to reconcile the science that Doc bases his conclusions on with the arguments made by the Commission.

Secondly, there seems to be a general feeling that al Qaeda would be unable to carry out such an attack. I agree. And I hope that I made clear in the article that Iran and North Korea are years away from having the capability of doing so. That said, because of the devastating nature of the threat, it would seem prudent to continue our efforts to prevent both Iran and the NoKo’s from getting their hands on the bomb as well as preventing them from buying technology that would assist them in their development of ICBMs.

It would seem to be the least we can do.