We're all giving up so much---for NOTHING.

[CoffeeCat]

Last week, when the US Government suspected that several Floridian yahoos were real, live terrorists---we didn't hear the end of it. Media satellite trucks rushed to Florida, every network covered the story and this was major, "breaking news" on every media outlet.

Isn't it logical to assume that every time this administration breaks up a terrorist cell or foils a big plot--that they sound the alarm bells and the media trumpets the news?

If these Floridian yahoos is all they have---a stark reality emerges. The reality that: Tapping our phones, reading our email, scouring our private cell-phone records, scrutinizing our bank records and monitoring Web/blog posts--does not catch terrorists. They've caught NONE--unless you count these Florida wannabees.

What's the pay off for our privacy being obliterated and our civil rights being squashed--as we watch the Bill of Rights and the Constitution being flushed down the toilet? Apparently, the payoff is that I can sleep soundly tonight, knowing that a few Florida misfits who were talking trash and doing a boatload of push ups in a warehouse--are in custody.

Bottom line: America is paying in spades for a terrorist-cracking program that trashes our fundamental rights--and produces absolutely nothing.

[Erika]

1. W and his government are making fools of themselves

Let them do it. The Miami 7 were a bunch of homeless who had Christian drawings in their warehouse.

Alberto and W look like utter fools.

[eleny]

2. And since they had to cultivate those yahoos - there are no real ones

[manic expression]

3. Right

spying on Americans and violating our privacy has nothing to do with stopping terrorism. It never did. It had everything to do with using people's fear to gain more power and control over people's lives.

[jerry611]

4. It took years for the FBI to bust those Miami guys

These guys dressed up in ninja costumes and did jumping jacks in the backyard at 4am. And it took the FBI years to find them.

Now just imagine if there was a terrorist in the United States that had half a brain? The FBI would never find him. Meanwhile our phone call to aunt Mary is being monitored.

[motocicleta]

5. I love how the administration likes to pull out the

"many terrorist plots have been foiled" line like we don't know about the foiled plots because everything was so super-secret. And then they come out with these 7 losers who talked bad about the Sears Tower as if that was a huge victory in the "war on terra".

It is logically impossible for a rational human to believe both stories. Either we have secretly wrecked a bunch of scary plots, or we cracked down publicly hard on a slew of absolute losers, but not both.

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. You're so right

This is apparently the kind of idiocy they are referring to when they claim to have foiled numerous terrorist plots.

[me b zola]

6. We did for our enemies what they never could have done themselves

This was the subject of a thread a few weeks ago. OBL, nor anybody else (maybe with the exception of China) could have done to us what we have done to ourselves.

I am in no way trying to minimize the pain and destruction of a terrorist attack, but they are very limited in what they can accomplish. Terrorist have the abiliity to create havic & loss of life, but they mostly possess the power to make people afraid.

Who we are is rooted in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law--those are the things that define us, that tell us what it means to be American. Not OBL, Al Queada, or any other terrorist group have the ability to take away what it means to be American. ONLY WE CAN DO THAT TO OURSELVES, and sadly, we have.

[lostnfound]

8. It's not for nothing. It produces profits, and blackmail / slandermaterial

Profits for corporate friends of the Administration.
and
Blackmail material useful for controlling individuals that the Administration wants controlled, or slander material for those it wants to slander.