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Edited on Tue Feb-07-06 07:18 PM by smartvoter
in terms of how it was just kind of wiped out of discussion.
I remember this issue distinctly because my own moronic representative JD Hayworth was on Crossfire trying to do damage control by playing the name game. The way I heard it told, and later read about in Newsweek (I think -- could have been Time or the ATLANTIC), was that after the USS Cole bombing, the Clinton administration drew up plans to attack Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. They did not launch because they didn't want to start an offensive during a transition of power, so the first thing they did was to hand over plans to attack Al Qaeda. Rice and others were described as laughing it off, claiming they thought the Clinton administration was "naive" about Al Qaeda's attack capabilities.
After 911, the story of this surfaced VERY BRIEFLY. JD Hayworth tried to dismiss it on Crossfire, saying it was just to "Roll Back" Al Qaeda, doing the quotes with his fingers in the air, and we need to destroy them and catch Bin Laden. The person on the other side, and I wish I could remember who it was, said that he had seen both plans and they were essentially the same and told JD that he knew enough to realize attack plans are attack plans, regardless of who's in office. Yes, the operation was renamed, but it was drawn from the same set of existing plans, which played a big part in how we were able to move so quickly on Afghanistan.
Over time, after it was repeatedly dismissed, it just faded out. (ON EDIT: The implication was that if they had simply struck when they had the chance, it may very well have disrupted 911 planning and 911 may not have happened at all.)
It seems to me that the same type of thing is happening with wiretapping. They can wiretap immediately, without a warrant, and then go to a judge three days later to explain what they are doing and get the approval to continue. But as near as I can tell, this is being dropped right now in the press and elsewhere, as the argument that they can't wait for a warrant, which has been repeated a million times or more, has gained traction and kind of rubbed out this problematic little fact in their justification for wiretapping.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone remembered about the other thing because they are similar in the way these key facts are being ignored.
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