enemy number one

McCain is back to being a Senator and offering advice on Afghanistan:

Sen. John McCain says the situation in Afghanistan will get more difficult before it gets easier — "just like the surge in Iraq was."

The former Republican presidential candidate visited the southern province of Helmand on Sunday, where he said NATO forces are at a stalemate with insurgents. McCain says the U.S. will be paying more attention to that part of the country with an influx of troops.

Throughout the campaign, McCain said if he was President he would capture Osama bin Laden – that he knew how to. A lot of people questioned rather he had some great plan to fulfill this promise that he decided to hold onto, instead of sharing with the current administration so that we could capture public enemy number one. Now that McCain has lost the election, and said he has no plans on running again, will he share his great knowledge with Obama, or was he just blowing a bunch of smoke up our asses?

Last week the Chicago Tribune published an article regarding how easy it was to identify covert CIA agents using simple web searches. The byline summed up their views on it "It's easy to track America's covert operatives. All you need to know is how to navigate the Internet.". They then described the outcome of their investigation as this:

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson noticed this article and has taken a more realistic view on it.

Oh really? Okay Mr. Crewdson (the author of this nonsense). Please search the internet and identify 100 CIA officers for me. Go ahead. Give it a shot. Oh, I forgot, first you need a name. You do not just enter a random name and come up with a flashing sign that says, "this guy is CIA". So really what you are saying is that if I tell you someone works for the CIA you can do a search and find out that someone, who is a private consultant, once worked for the U.S. State Department? In other words, you first have to be tipped off to look at a particular person.

I agree 100% with Larry on this but I also want to take it further. For years we have been reminded of Osama's existence by video and audio transmissions that are placed on al Qaeda websites. The problem is that someone has to be sitting at a computer to put this information on the web and we can not find them. If someone downloads illegal porn then we know exactly where they are at but we can't find public enemy number one who is also using a computer?

Bush acknowledges secret order for
domestic spying

President George W. Bush on Saturday acknowledged he signed a secret
order after the September 11, 2001, attacks to allow the surveillance of
people in the United States.

In a rare live radio address, Bush defended the practice as a "vital
tool" in defending the United States against another such attack.

That story is fresh from
Reuters.
I have heard some people trying to defend this action by saying he is protecting
us from other attacks. I have a different take on it.

After 9/11 Bush told us that they attacked us because they "hate our
freedoms". Those freedoms are guaranteed in the Constitution and more
importantly in the Bill of Rights. What Bush has done is crippled those freedoms
and did so illegally. You can basically say that Osama won against us because of
it.

The problem I have is this. It is not that hard to get a warrant. One phone
call and they can have it. Why does our President feel he has to remove this
step of the process. This single step is what changes the action from being
legal to being illegal and unconstitutional. If they have enough reason to
believe someone is planning an attack then call a judge and get the warrant.

Republican Senator John Sununu said it best yesterday by quoting Benjamin
Franklin - "Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little
temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." We can not give up our
rights and liberties in this war. If we do then we have nothing left to fight
for.