Author: Jeff Huber

No, it’s not a remake of the film Doctor Strangelove.  It’s the real foreign policy and security strategy really being conducted in real-time by the real United States of America in the real world.

Below the fold: as usual, you couldn’t make this stuff up…
The new U.S. National Security Strategy says America “may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

Asked yesterday if the U.S. would defend Israel from Iran militarily, Mister Bush said, “You bet, we’ll defend Israel.”

Mister Bush neglected to mention that Iran at present has nothing for us to defend Israel against.  As I outlined in “Iran and Irrational Security Strategy,” Iran has no nuclear weapons, claims to have no ambition to acquire or develop them, and its conventional forces are incapable of projecting power against Israel.  Iran’s conventional forces could conceivably engage U.S. forces in combat, but only because U.S. forces are stationed in two countries adjacent to Iran (Iraq and Afghanistan).  And they’d be crazy to do it.

The Security Strategy also states that, “Iran has violated its Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards obligations.”

In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made ominous noises about “other means” of making Iran live up to these obligations.  

America recently agreed to provide India with fissile materials for its nuclear power plants, but the pact provides no restrictions on India’s 8 reactors that produce plutonium for weapons.  India has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Strategy further says that “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism[.]”  Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also been known to harbor terrorists.  The Strategy doesn’t say anything about that, though it does refer to Egypt and Saudi Arabia as our “traditional allies.”  

Korea Cat Calls

The Security Strategy maintains the Bush administration’s policy of preemption.  

Yesterday, North Korea North Korea announced that it had built nuclear weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.  

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike…  Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”

The U.S. urged North Korea to return to international nuclear negotiations instead of making “inflammatory statements.”  

The National Security Strategy accuses North Korean of posing “a serious nuclear proliferation challenge.”

A North Korean spokesman called that accusation “…a robbery-like declaration of war.  Through this document, the Bush administration declared to the world that it is a group of war fanatics.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said America has no plans to invade or attack North Korea, although joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are scheduled for this weekend.

Bear Hunting

The Security Strategy also says that America’s relationships with long-time nuclear power Russia will depend on that country improving its democracy record and foreign policies.

On March 20, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement that said:

Should we understand this means that in the immediate future U.S.-Russian relations face far from the best of times?  One cannot escape the impression that [Washington] is using populist slogans in its own interests… No one has, or can have, a monopoly on the interpretation of democracy.  One can contribute to the creation of democracy, but each state must follow its own path toward democracy, as did and does the United States.

On March 1, Mister Bush paid a “surprise” visit to Afghanistan and praised the country on its “progress toward democracy.”

CNN reports today that Afghani Abdul Rahman has been arrested and is on trial for converting to Christianity.  Democratic Afghanistan’s constitution forbids rejection of Islam.  Rahman and other Christian converts are eligible for the death penalty.

Security Strategy Scorecard

In summary:

We’ve entered the fourth year of a war with a country that supposedly had an active nuclear weapons program but turned out not to.

We’re making boo-noise about taking military action against a country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons and says it doesn’t seek any.

We’ve promised a country that admits it has nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them preemptively that we won’t attack or invade it.  

We’re supporting the nuclear program of a country that hasn’t signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  

We’re criticizing the democratic process of the country with the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal.  

We’re praising the democratic process of a country in which being Christian is a capital crime.

And that’s just the goofy stuff we’re doing overseas.

On the Home Front

This morning, Don Imus criticized Helen Thomas for being disrespectful to Mister Bush at yesterday’s White House press conference.

What Helen did that Don considered so impertinent was ask Bush why he went to war in Iraq, and persisted on getting an answer when Bush didn’t give her one.  

How dare anyone expect a straight answer from the president of the United States?  This one, anyway.

Mister Bush has said the Iraq invasion wasn’t about oil or Israel.  

Mister Bush’s Iraq policy was formulated by the conservative think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).  

In 1998, the PNAC wrote a letter to President Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power through military force in order to protect “…our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil…”

Among the signatories of that letter were future key figures in the Bush II administration: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Paula Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Peter Rodman, and William Schneider, Jr.

Current Vice President Dick Cheney was a PNAC charter member, as was his former chief of staff Lewis Libby.  

I haven’t heard anyone else mention this, but I find it interesting that Mister Bush claims we didn’t invade Iraq to defend Israel, but we’ll use military force to defend Israel from Iran.  Iraq conceivably could have brought military force to bear on Israel, but Iran, at present, poses no military threat to Israel.  

At yesterday’s White House press conference, Mister Bush said that it would be up to a “future president” to decide when to bring the troops home.

Heck, if you didn’t know better, you might think the purpose of our foreign policy and strategy is to make sure we have an excuse to be in a war for as long as Mister Bush is in the White House.  

I pity the poor slob who has to clean up the mess Bush leaves.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his daily commentaries at Pen and Sword and ePluribus Media.

“9/11 changed everything.”
— Dick Cheney

“Not.”
— Anonymous

I’m fond (maybe too fond) of saying that there’s nothing about our so-called war on terror that Thucydides didn’t write about in his History of the Peloponnesian War in 400 B.C.  

That’s why I found this article by WaPo’s Dafna Linzer somewhat disturbing.

Below the fold: The NSC’s Sesame Street Generation

The NSC’s Sesame Street Generation

They headed off to college as the Berlin Wall was coming down, were inspired by globalization and came of age with international terrorism. Freed from a constant nuclear standoff as a dominant fact of international life, members of Generation X no longer fear war or upheaval in the global status quo…

…[N]early a dozen thirtysomething aides, breastfed on “Sesame Street” and babysat by “The Brady Bunch,” are now shaping those strategies in unexpected ways as senior advisers at the National Security Council, the White House’s powerful inner chamber of foreign policy aides with routine access to Bush. This small group of conservative Gen Xers — members of an age cohort once all but written off as stand-for-nothing underachievers–is the first set of American policymakers truly at home in a unipolar world…

…Is it any wonder that some of the generation’s best conservative minds serve a president who has staked his legacy on transforming the Middle East by force of arms?

Let’s take a look at the inherent fallacies in the phrase “best conservative minds.”

One of these bright young lights is 32-year-old Michael Allen, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley’s special adviser for legislative affairs.  Hadley apparently likes to tell sea stories about his years as an arms control negotiator during the cold war.  What’s Allen’s reaction to these history lessons?  “We’re like ‘Arms control, what’s that?'” he says.  

Um, actually, Michael, “that” would be like, um, the stuff we’re trying to do with Iran right now.  You remember Iran, don’t you?  The country with the new meanie president who says crazy stuff?  You know–kind of like Iraq only with an “n” at the end of it instead of a “q.”

Another of these 100 watt bulbs is 36-year-old Meghan O’Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. “You have to think about what are the defining features of the age we live in,” she says.  “For me, that’s American primacy, globalization, terrorism and WMD, which is why we do what we do. This wasn’t applicable during the Cold War.”

Is that so, Meghan?  Let’s see.  What was America trying to gain over the Soviets during the Cold War?  It was “primacy,” wasn’t it?  And when do you think globalization started?  I bet your grandpa owned a Toyota or two.  (No, come to think of it, your grandpa was probably a Mercedes man.)  Terrorism is a whole lot older than your grandpa, but I bet he remembers who helped Osama bin Laden form his al Qaeda terrorist group to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.  And all those nuclear thingies we and the Soviets had pointed at each other, were they massive or what?

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To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes a lot.  Understanding history won’t give you all the answers, but ignorance of history is a sure fire recipe for repeating its disasters.  

The “best young conservative minds” shaping policy today have no memory of Vietnam.  That was something their poor friends’ dads fought.  The first Gulf War was a reality TV show.

What little history they know they learned from their mentors, the Dick Cheney generation of neoconservatives who had better things to do than fight in Vietnam, who wrote the script of the first Gulf War, and who literally invented a history to justify the second one.  

X Generation of neoconservatives have no grasp of reality.  They think it’s something they can cook up in a think tank.  As one White House aide told NYT’s Ron Suskind in 2004, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

In other words, the Brady Bunch of young Republicans forming U.S. security policy think they’re gods.

And as Second City TV’s Count Floyd would say, Scary, huh kids?

Oh.  I forgot.  The little rascals in the National Security Council don’t remember Second City TV.  That was, like, pre-iPod, right?

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his daily commentaries at Pen and Sword.

You may be of the same mind as I am regarding tonight’s State of the Union speech.  It has a dead-skunk-in-the-road factor.  It’s going to be ugly to look at, but so, so hard to look away from.

As of January 31st in the Year of our Lord 2006, the mask has come off of the Bush presidency.  No more pretence about compassionate conservatism.  No more hokum about uniting-not-dividing.  This administration is about absolute power, Machiavellian power that exists for its own purpose and an end for which all means are justified.

The true state of our Union is a sad one.  America has become a theocratic military empire.  
As of this morning, with the confirmation of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, we are a one party political system, and that party exists for the sole purpose of supporting the emperor.  If the legislature accidentally passes a law the emperor doesn’t like, the emperor can simply interpret it in a way that suits him, and the Supreme Court will affirm the emperor’s constitutional right to do that as a wartime commander in chief.  

The emperor will always be a wartime commander in chief because we are in a war against terrorism, and there will always be terrorism, so we will always be at war against it.  

War is the core tenet of all American foreign and domestic policy.  Like nineteenth century Prussia, we have become a country that exists to support its military force.  We spend as much on the Department of Defense as the military spending of the rest of the world combined.  That doesn’t even include what we spend on homeland security.  Our economy is dependent on a half trillion dollar a year dump into the military industrial complex.  Our civilian service secretaries, who control weapon systems acquisitions, are former senior executives of the country’s largest defense contractors and will ensure that we never kick our fiscal addiction to the machinery of war.  Our diplomacy, such as it is, merely exists to deliver official threats of military action.  

All federal social and health services are being outsourced to government sanctioned religious organizations.  It won’t be long before the faith based mob runs all secular charities out of business, and the day is coming when you’ll have to go through an ordained minister to get so much as a freaking flu shot.  

We’ll maintain some vestiges of representative government.  You’ll still get to vote, for example.  But if you don’t vote for whomever your minister tells you to vote for, you’ll burn in hell.  And your minister is going to tell you to vote for the folks who are pouring federal tax dollars into his collection plate, and those folks will all be personal friends of the emperor.  

Scoff all you like, but don’t say I didn’t tell you.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his daily commentaries at Pen and Sword.

The Bush administration’s latest lollapalooza is still flying under the radar.  

Last week, it asked the Supreme Court to make Lindsey Graham’s bill that suspends Guantanamo detainees’ right to habeas corpus appeals retroactive.  This would effectively dismiss more than 180 pending petitions.

It would also turn the habeas bill into something the United States Constitution expressly forbids: an ex post facto law.  

Dictionary.com defines “ex post facto” as “Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively.  Used especially of a law.”

So how Alberto Gonzales will argue that a retroactive habeas bill would not be an ex post facto law is something of a mystery.  Maybe he’ll say that this ex post facto law isn’t the kind of ex post facto law the Constitution talks about because the Constitution was written before 9/11/2001, and 9/11 changed everything.  

Or some incredible Orwellian rot like that.
I don’t know why Gonzales wastes his time with these nickel and dime assaults on the Constitution. He should just sit down and write a new one that says exactly what his boss wants it to say.  It would read something like this…

Legislative power will move to the executive branch, but there will still be a Congress.  That way, the people can still vote for their own congressional representatives, and even though their representatives can’t vote on anything themselves, the people will still be represented because they got to elect their representatives.  Plus, whenever anything goes wrong, everybody can blame it on Congress.

Gonzales will write all the laws, but the Mr. Bush must approve them.  And Gonzales will not write any laws that Mr. Bush hasn’t already approved, so there will still be checks and balances.  

The new Constitution will drastically streamline the Executive and Judicial branches.  The courts will come under direct control of the Gonzales Justice Department, and Homeland Security will fold into the Department of Defense.  All other cabinet functions will be outsourced to subsidiaries of Halliburton.    

There will be no enumerated presidential war powers because that might imply that there are limits to Mr. Bush’s war powers, which there won’t be.  Mr. Bush will have sole authority to declare peace.  But don’t worry; he’ll never do that.  

The Bill of Rights will be replaced by the Bill of Goods.  Americans citizens will still have rights, but if they abuse those rights by exercising them, they’ll be declared enemy combatants and rendered to a third world country where they don’t have any rights to abuse.

The new Constitution will be ratified two thirds of Mr. Bush’s immediate family.  

The most important aspect of the new Constitution is that it will be retroactive, going into effect the day before the old Constitution went into effect.  Anything in the old Constitution that prohibits anything in the new Constitution won’t matter because the old Constitution will be null and void before it ever existed.  

And it won’t matter that the new Constitution is ex post facto law because ex post facto laws are allowed in the new Constitution.  In fact, they’re required.

Cross posted at ePluribus Media Community

Both Time and Newsweek are running cover stories on the looming debate over wartime separation of powers that was sparked by the National Security Agency domestic spying scandal.  As we noted before Christmas at ePluribus Media Journal in “Smoke, Mirrors and War Powers,” the actions and decisions made over the NSA issue may determine the nature of the separation of powers among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of our federal government for decades — and centuries — to come.

The Crux of the Issue

Over the past week, the administration and its supporters have based their claims of “plenary” (absolute) executive wartime authority on two documents: the U.S. Constitution and the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress passed in 2001 the week after the 9/11 attacks.  

To make a convincing case that Mr. Bush has virtually unlimited war powers based on the Constitution alone might take an extraordinary piece of lawyering.  Article II makes the President commander in chief of the military, and allows him to make treaties, but only with consent of two thirds of the Senate.  As enumerated constitutional executive war powers go, that’s about it.  One can find any number of mentions of sweeping executive war powers in legislation and judicial opinion, but citing statutes and case law is like taking a stroll through a cherry orchard.  You can pick whatever flavor suits your taste.  For every allusion to the notion that a President has unquestionable decision-making power in time of war, you’ll find another one that says he doesn’t.  

That’s where the 2001 AUMF comes in.  Among other things, that legislation empowered Mr. Bush to:  

…use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

The AUMF also states:

“… the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States[.]”

Hence, Congress finds itself in an embarrassing situation.  It granted Mr. Bush inferred constitutional powers to fight terrorism, as well as authorizing him to use “all necessary and appropriate force.”

The Three Ring Circus Act

Congress will play the “legislative intent” card, and will argue that the term “appropriate force” was intended to bar Mr. Bush from exceeding his constitutional powers.  

The administration will counter by saying Mr. Bush had constitutional power to do whatever he determined necessary to fight terrorism because Congress said he did when it passed the AUMF.  The debate will go around and around until it augurs into the graveyard of the public’s attention span or winds up in the Supreme Court.  

At that point, the Court would face a number of less than desirable options.  If it refuses to hear the case, Chief Justice John Roberts will be accused of siding with the man who put him in his job.  Taking the case and ruling in favor of Mr. Bush would produce the same result.  If the court took the case and ruled that the AUMF was an unconstitutional law, it would reverse an earlier recent decision in which it recognized the AUMF’s legitimacy.

In the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the high court ruled that the AUMF’s “necessary and appropriate force” language gave Mr. Bush authority to hold an American citizen in detention as an “enemy combatant.”  

Compared to holding U.S. citizens in prison without trial, what’s a little spying on them amount to?  And if a President can imprison and spy on citizens under authority of the AUMF, what else can’t he do?

Branches and Sequels

There are, of course, other possible outcomes.  The Supreme Court might rule, for example, that certain types of intelligence gathering are not allowed by the AUMF without court orders.  Or the Congress could rewrite the AUMF to place specific restrictions on the President’s authorities in his conduct of the Global War on Terror.  They could even repeal the AUMF entirely.  

But any direct action by the legislature and the judiciary to limit Mr. Bush’s powers could have a devastating backlash effect.  If any further terror attacks of 9/11 magnitude take place on American soil, the other two branches of government will be accused of having handcuffed the President, and any subsequent attempts at curbing executive powers will be doomed to failure in the court of public opinion.

Here’s an interesting story that hasn’t hit the mainstream press yet.

A news release from Official Wire says that Russ Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst has sent two letters to the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees regarding NSA wrongoings.  

Mr. Tice intends to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while he was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). These acts involved the Director of the National Security Agency, the Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and were conducted via very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAP). SAP programs and operations are more commonly referred to as “black world” programs and operations. Mr. Tice was a technical intelligence specialist dealing almost exclusively with SAP programs and operations at both NSA and DIA.

Mr. Tice stated: “As a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) officer it is continually drilled into us that the very first law chiseled in the SIGINT equivalent of the Ten Commandments (USSID-18) is that Thou shall not spy on American persons without a court order from FISA. This law is continually drilled into each NSA intelligence officer throughout his or her career. The very people that lead the National Security Agency have violated this holy edict of SIGINT.”

[…]

It is with my oath as a US intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to congress acts that I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.”

This could play large in the Snoopgate scandal, perhaps in a bizarre way.  Mr. Tice has a stormy history with his former employer.

In May 2005, FEDERALTIMES ran a story on Tice’s departure from the NSA.

Russ Tice, who spent nearly 20 years analyzing intelligence for the Air Force, Navy, Defense Intelligence Agency and NSA, will be fired May 16, said the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Project on Government Oversight. In 2001, Tice, who was then working at DIA, reported his suspicions that a co-worker might have been a Chinese spy, POGO said. Two years later, after Tice had transferred to NSA, an FBI investigation into the DIA co-worker prompted Tice to raise his concerns again.

POGO said that led to a series of retaliatory actions against Tice, such as a psychiatric evaluation that led to his security clearance being revoked. Tice was also assigned to unload furniture from trucks at a warehouse, which led to a back injury, and worked in the NSA motor pool for eight months chauffeuring agency officials and checking fluids, vacuuming and cleaning vehicles. This “unusually abusive retaliation” was an attempt to force Tice to resign, POGO said.

And in another retaliatory action, POGO said, NSA withdrew an award Tice received for his intelligence work during the Iraq war after he lost his security clearance.

Given the Bush administration’s track record with whistle blowers, there’s every reason to believe that Tice was a victim of unfair and “abusive” retaliation.  But just now, there’s no way of proving it.  What’s more, Tice appears to be especially vulnerable to the kind of personal smear campaign this administration has become so well known for.  

The Pulse Journal also ran a story on the Tice firing that gave further details on the nature of the retaliatory measures taken against him.

In April 2003, Tice sent an e-mail to the DIA agent handling his suspicions about a co-worker being a Chinese spy. He was prompted to do so by a news report about two FBI agents who were arrested for giving classified information to a Chinese double agent.

“At the time, I sent an e-mail to Mr. James (the person at DIA handling his complaint) questioning the competence of counterintelligence at FBI,” Tice wrote in a document submitted to the Inspector General. In the e-mail, he mentioned that he suspected that he was the subject of electronic monitoring.

Shortly after sending the e-mail, an NSA security officer ordered [Tice] to report for “a psychological evaluation” even though he had just gone through one nine months earlier. Tice believes James called NSA to ask them “to go after him” on their behalf.

When Tice called Mr. James to confront him about calling the NSA security official, he told Tice that “there was reason to be concerned” about his suspicion about his former co-worker.

The Defense Department psychologist concluded that Tice suffered from psychotic paranoia, according to Tice. “He did this even though he admitted that I did not show any of the normal indications of someone suffering from paranoia,” Tice wrote in a statement to the inspector general.

For the time being, I’m perfectly willing to take Tice’s story at face value.  The notion of this administration using an ordered psychological investigation to discredit a whistle blower carries merit.  Unfortunately, the very fact of a DOD psychologist diagnosing Tice as a psychotic paranoid damages his credibility.  Congressional leaders and the mainstream press will likely balk at giving his claims credence unless a number of other NSA officials come forward to confirm his story.

And given the history of what’s happened to whistle blowers during the Bush administration’s tenure, how likely is that to happen?

Whether or not Presidents Carter and Clinton violated the FISA act on their watches is, at the end of the day, irrelevant.  Two wrongs don’t make a right, nor do three ,or four, or a thousand.  All that really matters right now is whether Mister Bush committed a wrong, and determining that will take smashing the mirrors and clearing the smoke.
Mister Bush committed a wrong if he authorized non-court approved surveillance on U.S. persons in violation of the FISA law, which resides in a series of subsections of U.S. Code.  In working our way through that maze, we may as well start at the beginning.

Subsection 1801 defines a number of descriptions of groups, individuals and activities including “foreign power,” “agent of a foreign power,” “international terrorism,” “sabotage” and “electronic surveillance.”

But the most important definition in this section is the one that describes a “United States person,” which states:

“United States person” means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.

It’s a fair assumption that the plain English abstraction of this legalese is that if you’re a citizen or legal resident of the United States, you’re a United States person.

Let’s move ahead to Subsection 1802, which authorizes electronic surveillance without court order under certain conditions.  It says that…

Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that…

[Among other things]

…there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party[.]

This  appears to protect any United States person from unwarranted surveillance.

The last part of this subsection says:

Applications for a court order under this subchapter are authorized if the President has, by written authorization, empowered the Attorney General to approve applications to the court having jurisdiction under section 1803 of this title, and a judge to whom an application is made may, notwithstanding any other law, grant an order, in conformity with section 1805 of this title, approving electronic surveillance of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information, except that the court shall not have jurisdiction to grant any order approving electronic surveillance directed solely as described in paragraph (1)(A) of subsection (a) of this section unless such surveillance may involve the acquisition of communications of any United States person.

This seems to be quintuple negative lawyer speak that says the courts don’t have jurisdiction over electronic surveillance unless there’s a  United States person who “may be” involved.  

Let’s skip ahead now to Subsection 1181, “Authorization during time of war,” which in its entirety reads:

Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.

One can reasonably assume this means that the prohibition from electronically spying on U.S. persons is waived fifteen days from a Congressional declaration of war.  

Did the congressional Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) of September 2001 and September 2002 constitute declarations of war by virtue of “specific statutory authority?”

Lamentably, they probably did.  

So unless Congress and its lawyers can prove beyond doubt that electronic surveillance was targeted against non-U.S. persons outside of the 15-day window that the FISA act describes, Messrs. Bush and Gonzalez will skate away from this scandal on the thin ice of a new day.

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I’m watching MSNBC’s Mrs. FED Chairman interviewing Joe Biden on this issue.  Neither of them seem to have a clue about the real legal and constitutional issues on this subject.

As Perry White, Superman’s boss on the Daily Planet used to say:

“Great Caesar’s ghost!”

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By the way, if you haven’t read much Shakespeare, you might want to start with his Tragedy of Julius Caesar.  It may give you historical perspective on our contemporary situation.