There is no finite number of terrorists.

* athenae:

"There is no finite number of terrorists. And we will not be able to keep them all in one place so we can kill them all at once.
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And it is time that the people pushing that ridiculous argument — basically, that other people's kids should do the tough job of killing bad guys in a country we don't have to see reduced to rubble if we can just shut off the TV — realize how morally bankrupt and criminally delusional it is.

It's one thing to push a strategy. There are any number of reality-based ways of fighting terrorism — look at the Brits making arrests, for example, with law enforcement without invading Venezuala just to engorge their national cock — and people can argue the merits of one over the merits of another.

It's another thing entirely to pass off bar room bravado about how "we" are fighting "them" over "there," when "we" generally cannot find "there" on a map or pick "them" out of a lineup, and know damn well it isn't going to work. Killing other people's kids to satisfy your need to have something to say over a beer or on Tweety's show of an evening is a form of sickness I have no words to describe."

* this via kathleen:

"On August 12, 2006, thousands across America will take a stand to say no to the crime of occupation, and no to US and Zionist designs for the Middle East. They will also gather to say that nothing can hide the blood dripping from the hands of the Republican and Democratic parties, and that this will not be forgotten as we return to our communities and engage in activism through social justice, and later on, at the voting polls. Moreover, it must be noted that those in the US anti-war/ peace movement, who have persistently argued that the question of Palestine, and the nature of Zionism are not worthy issues to be included in its agenda, have indirectly facilitated the atrocities that we are witnessing today."

* AL:

"My sense is that whoever drafted the Specter bill--probably David Addington--intentionally packed it full of poison pills. The bill seems to legalize warrantless surveillance in many different ways, some of them obvious, some more subtle. This built-in redundancy is likely a way of insuring that even if the bill gets amended on its way through Congress, it will still contain some statutory hook on which the administration can hang the legality of its surveillance practices. The administration may have suspected that the bill's most brazen provisions, such as the one doing away with FISA's exclusivity clause, would encounter Congressional resistance and ultimately be left out of the final bill.

In other words, there seem to be a number of fallback provisions built in to the bill. If it is passed in its present form, these provisions are largely superfluous and unnecessary; FISA, by its own terms, would no longer be the exclusive means through which surveillance could be conducted. But the administration may have anticipated resistance and planned accordingly. They may be counting on the bill's opponents focusing their fire on the more provocative provisions of the bill while ignoring the subtler changes, such as the ones Orin Kerr highlights in his post. This is all the more reason for opponents of bill to focus on killing it altogether."