Bush Vs. America?

Michelle Malkin points to a new Rasmussen poll showing that 64% of Americans believe the NSA should be allowed to intercept phone calls between terrorism suspects abroad and people living in the United States.

This could be because the practice is apparently legal, as the guys at Power Line explain. Whether it should be, however, may be another matter. Libertarians like Jacob Sullum argue that we should all worry about what he calls Bush's "sweeping assertion of executive power," and such healthy skepticism is, well, healthy. But at the same time, the civil libertarian watchdogs need to start offering some viable, non-invasive alternatives to wiretapping that will allow us to effectively identify terrorist threats before they materialize in the form of mushroom clouds or more disintegrated skyscrapers. I suspect this is where the confusion begins.

What happens when you think both critics and supporters of President Bush's prosecution of the domestic war make good points? Federal court deliberations are usually preferable to flipping a coin when determining the legality of government action (though all too often it seems the latter method is employed), and at his point, at least, it looks like Bush has the legal authority to order surveillance of communication between suspected terrorists and their enablers in the U.S.

Though most libertarians oppose the war in Iraq, most likewise favored the use of military force in Afghanistan. However, an important question remains: If we were wrong to invade Iraq with the intention of confronting and killing terrorists, yet the commander-in-chief should also be prohibited from surveilling on the home front suspects who might turn out to be innocent, where does this leave us? I don't know if I have the answer to this, unless of course that answer is "Sitting on our thumbs," but if worthwhile tactics are abundant it would seem like we'd hear about them every now and again.

Certainly one very effective means of collecting intelligence on prospective terrorists is to use informants, and though Bill Clinton virtually put an end to such practices I don't believe we employ them to a large extent today. I've read that intel agents prefer monitoring satellite feeds through plasma TVs in Langley to "diarrhea duty" in the desert, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that agencies like the NSA and CIA - so often hostile to Bush administration policies to begin with - retain the Clinton restrictions on cutting deals with criminal informants in exchange for vital intelligence (giving the impression of "rewarding" unsavory behavior is apparently worse than sustaining preventable terrorist attacks).

Given the classified nature of intelligence activity, it's difficult if not impossible to tell how effectively we're gathering information on our enemies. And despite the glee most liberals exhibit whenever Bush seems to be faced with a dilemma, I strongly welcome a debate on acceptable levels of executive power in a time of war. I just hope that in the process we can place the welfare of the country and its citizens above our quest to malign a sitting president.