Solutions for Homeland Security

Guess which one of these two guys is in charge?

I think we should put Charles in Charge of Homeland Security. Buddy Lembeck was always trying to get on those girls that Charles was in charge of, and he managed to keep things under control.

President Bush did his best to defend the NSA wiretapping controversy today, while visiting Kansas State University. As you all already know, the Administration has authorized wiretaps without judiciary oversight, claiming that such secret wiretaps are necessary for homeland security. Those of you who follow the Bush Administration can see a pattern emerge here. When we detain terror suspects, even those who are US citizens, without the right to appear in court and without being charged, we're doing it to prevent terrorism. When we invaded Iraq, despite the fact that there was no pre-war link between Iraq and Al Quada, we did so to fight terrorism. It seems that every time the President wants to do something, and doesn't want to be questioned about it, he simply invokes the we're doing this to prevent terrorism card.

It's not a bad move on his part, even though I think it's completely dishonest. It's awfully hard to argue with preventing terrorism. It's like trying to argue in favor of killing puppies or raping children. Terrorism is pretty evil, and you'd feel pretty damned bad if you opposed something which could have prevented terrorism from occuring in the first place. But, the whole arguement is smoke and mirrors.

The Bush Administration claims that we need this information provided by wiretaps, torture and interrogation to prevent further acts of terror. The reason this argument is flawed as a justification for these "tools" is because the Bush Administration had a lot of this type of information and intelligence prior to 9/11 and failed to do anything with that information. If we had a competent administration, who we knew could act on intelligence and information gathered via illegal wiretaps and torture, I would be all for it, even though torturing people is wrong.

I am sort of a utilitarian when it comes to this type of thing. I believe if you can torture one invidual, particularly some seedy terrorist type, and save a couple hundred others in the process said torture is justifiable. You may not agree, but I don't care. The problem has never been, however, a lack of credible information. Even when the Bush Administration doesn't have the evidence or intelligence, the invasion of Iraq shows that they'll just make shit up.

We shouldn't authorize the Bush Administration to do these things, because they need oversite, judicial or otherwise, and because even if we did, we have no guarantee that the data gathered from these activities will help us to prevent further terror. Or we could put Charles in Charge, as I suggested earlier. Scott Baio is looking pretty damned good right now isn't he?