Real plots and liberals imagination of plots

Vito Fossella:

RIGHT now, a terrorist in Pakistan is talking to a terrorist in Afghanistan about a plot to kill innocent Americans. But because that call is routed through America, intelligence officials are forbidden from monitoring it without a warrant.

This is a dream scenario for the terrorists, a nightmare for the intelligence community - and an example of how the Democratic Congress is failing to act to protect our homeland.

By day's end, Congress will either update the law that governs the Terrorist Surveillance Program - or recess for August without giving intelligence officials the tools to keep our nation safe.

The urgent need for action is the result of Democratic criticism that the surveillance was being conducted with only the approval of the attorney general - and not a warrant. Rather than see the Democrats shut the program down after they'd won Congress, the Bush administration in January put it under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

That move saved the program, but at a cost: It created a backlog of surveillance requests and is blocking intelligence officials from intercepting communications and detecting plots in a timely manner.

Guarding civil liberties is important, but so is guarding American lives. Imagine waiting in line to get approval to eavesdrop on a cell in Germany as the terrorists plot out how to blow up a building or hijack a plane. The terrorists' war against us sometimes requires gathering intelligence quickly to prevent attacks.

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell warns that intelligence officials are "missing a significant portion of what we should be getting" from our surveillance because the law that governs the program is 29 years old and woefully out-of-date. The current threat environment, he says, demands an immediate fix of the law.

Congress has had more than seven months to to make that fix- and more than three months since McConnell unveiled a comprehensive reform plan. Yet the job's been left to the last day before a month-long recess - if then.

The Senate has several proposals under consideration; the House seems inclined to do nothing or pass a toothless reform bill that will make the terrorists smile. The best we can probably hope for at this time is tweaking around the edges - a weak response to a chilling problem.

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The chances are slim that Democrats will act responsibly or that they will take responsibility for the mess that results from their failure to act. After the next attack they will be at the scene passing out blame and accepting none. Their irrational concern for terrorist rights and terrorist privacy trumps their concern for the safety of the US. We should remember this at the next election.