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So the ACLU doesn’t really like FBI Director Robert S. Mueller’s proposed new guidelines for investigations, fearing that the relaxed rules could open the door to politicized spying and other such perfidies. As interest groups tend to do, the ACLU emailed its take to editorial boards around the country, hoping to persuade opinion-leaders of the virtues of the civil-libertarian position. Now, most editorial writers are able to absorb such emails without firing off unhinged responses to their authors. But the Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz is not most editorial writers.
Below, please find Rabinowitz’s restrained, sensible, professional rejoinder to a group of total strangers.
From: Rabinowitz, Dorothy [mailto:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 3:43 PM
To: [ACLU]
Subject: RE: ACLU: Proposed FBI Guidelines Will Allow Racial Profiling and Spying on Innocent AmericansINNOCENT AMERICANS WERE KILLED BECAUSE WE DID NOT HAVE A PROPER–EXTENSIVE– SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM.
Journalistic diligence requires me to note that the surveillance infrastructure the U.S. had in place before September 11 collected communications detailing the forthcoming attack, and were unfortunately not translated until September 12. It also requires me to note that Rabinowitz, a grown woman, crafted the above missive in blue font.
Crossposted to The Streak.
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Blue font? That’ll show those islamoACLUfascists.
And it was in all caps too? Murdoch had soul mates working at the WSJ before he even bought the paper. She’s even more clueless about foreign affairs than Palin.
Actually what’s funny about this is she actually makes a specific claim, which you probably don’t really want to look into addressing.
Presumably the claim that the US “did not have a proper extensive surveillance system” would be adequately countered by noting that the US intercepts and parses the entire planet’s electronic communications, in the most advanced eavesdropping system ever attempted and which still cannot fully be comprehended. This would tend to meet the standards of both “proper” and “extensive”.
The problem with this is someone’s gonna spot a map at some point and discover the US is on that same planet.
Someone’s gonna wonder why, when eavesdropping on the world’s communications, the US would ignore the country they are most concerned with. Or how, when intercepting communications which are not state-based or share comms resources with other countries.
Someone’s gonna figure out that if the US was eavesdropping on the world’s communications before the 9/11 attacks then not much may have changed after 9/11 on account of Bush. Someone might even for the first time wonder how Bush okaying domestic surveillance could count for anything occurring that same month unless these domestic surveillance programs were already in place and operating with the flimsiest of fig-leafs.
Not really worth it is it ? After 8 years of pretending this started with Bush if you can just make it to Nov, you might be able to pretend it ends with him too.