I don't believe anyone ever said: "He's guilty I don't care what anyone says! He's guilty." That was never the attitude that I or anyone else had. Going into a debate on a topic I always leave myself open to new ideas and ways of seeing something, but consistantly when I presented legal arguments for what I believed was a violation of the law and constitution... no one argued the legal analysis of it, but however either grilled me on my sentance structure or the fact that "he hasn't been proven guilty." This I see as avoiding the real issue, and can perhaps be seen as avoiding the debate as a whole. I guess I just assumed that you wouldn't be so hampered by the fact that I didn't say: "it's my opinion that..." before everything.
There are also other opinions on this issue.
Here is an excellent video of Bush on spying preNYT leak.
John Dean was on Keith Olbermann's Countdown.(
video)
Dean: "It's the means that he's employed. Why, for example, hasn't he gone to Congress? If—he's been doing this for four years now, we've learned from the very first report that he didn't have in place initially protections. This is something they put in in 2004, thinking that, Well, if John Kerry does slip by, we could be in criminal trouble, so we'll put some protections in here, at least to look like we were doing it cautiously and carefully and protecting liberties.
But it was an afterthought. So why didn't anybody take care of this in four years? Why couldn't Congress—I haven't heard a good argument why Congress couldn't, indeed, have dealt with this issue."
Dean: "Well, I don't think there's any question he's violated the law. He's admitted to violating the law. What he is saying, I have a good defense, and that is national security. I have this power to do this, or this very vague resolution that the Congress granted for my using force in dealing with Afghanistan and terrorists. I can read into that that it also includes collecting signal intelligence. It's a stretch."
New York Times
"The point is that it appears to be illegal, and if George Bush believed it was genuinely critical to our national security he should have asked Congress to pass legislation authorizing it. The president is simply not allowed to decide for himself to break the law simply because it's inconvenient, and the excuse that he couldn't go to Congress because that would expose valuable secrets to al-Qaeda is laughable."
James Bamford on C-Span debating Victoria Toensing.
Bamford: "This is a president who has [spied on U.S. citizens] constantly since 2001, bypassing [the FISA] law. This isn’t a one-time deal. And, again, he has a lot of options for going to the court and doing this. He didn’t go to the court and there is a legal provision in that statute that says “if you don’t go to the court, it’s five years in jail and a ten thousand dollar fine.” So the solution here is to get a special prosecutor to take a look at whether the law…"
Toensing: (Off camera) "Ha!"
Bamford: "…Was violated. And I don’t know what’s funny about that. You know, we had the Republicans go to impeachment over a minor sexual discretion [sic] by a president. And here’s a president violating a law that says [there’s jailtime and a fine] if you manage to violate it."
Alan Dershowitz interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. (
video)
Wolf: "Did the President break the law?"
Alan: "I think the President broke the law. I think congress should hold hearings..."
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I think all these people have good points, and it is in my opinion that it would be wise to listen to what they have to say.