In the end, who will be the biggest losers after the war is over?

[Bill in SD, CA]

Personally, I think it will be the U.N.

Bill

[J-Excel]

Liberals

[osprey4]

One cannot lose what one never had. So neither France nor the UN could lose anyone's respect.

[sharder8]

One cannot lose what one never had. So neither France nor the UN could lose anyone's respect.

How true!

[Toadman]

The 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee.

[Theophylact]

The American people, because they'll have lost civil liberties that they may never get back. See this story in today's New York Times (FRYYY).

Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.

The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.

The landmark legislation expanded the government's power to use eavesdropping, surveillance, access to financial and computer records and other tools to track terrorist suspects.

When it passed in October 2001, moderates and civil libertarians in Congress agreed to support it only by making many critical provisions temporary. Those provisions will expire, or "sunset," at the end of 2005 unless Congress re-authorizes them.

[J-Excel]

Giving government the right to spy on suspected terrorists isn't such a bad thing. If the Liberals intend to use that as a major platform issue in 2004 they will end up looking silly. You can see them now trying to get on the national security bandwagon after getting thier butts kicked in the last election. But it's pretty obvious they are just going with the tide. They really need to define a platform and stick with it in order to get any respect in the near future.

[Mike]

What Theophylact is trying to say is that ANYONE the U.S. Government thinks is a terrorist can be followed, etc.
Nothing really stops them from saying "Hey look J-Excel is a terrorist, let's eavesdrop on him"

Just a minor irritation.

[J-Excel]

I think something on the order of 0.00006% of the population was spied on using the Patriot Act. There appears to be quite a few hurdles they have to jump in order to get authorization. I don't think they are randomly targeting people in the streets. You can probably still check out Catcher in the Rye at your local library without getting your phone tapped. It is entirely possible terrorist attacks have been averted because they did single out a few people as potential terrorists before they could do anything.

[Mike]

I doubt they'll actually check on regular people. What about people higher up on the food chain?
Besides.. How do they decide who they are going to target? Are they going to ask people they've arrested? What stops the man from just throwing out some random name to divert the Government?

Just seems a bit shady for me.