The Warrantless Debate Over Wiretapping - New York Times

The Warrantless Debate Over Wiretapping - New York Times: "For this purpose, warrants are utterly beside the point. As Judge Richard Posner has put it, “once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance cameras on city streets.” Warrants, which originate in the criminal justice paradigm, provide a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities."

Thanks to John O'Connor for this submission. We've had some long and interesting discussions on this, and it is satisfying to see more bipartisan unity there.

The War as We Saw It - New York Times

The War as We Saw It: "As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.) The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.... In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal."

A bitching GI is a happy GI... I can't help wondering if the NY Times would print an article by troops from the 82nd who support our policy (as I am sure make up the majority of the troops)? No. Probably not. They couldn't be "responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers" could they?