Originally Posted by tadpole256

You can read it, and re-read it, and read it once more, it does not change the fact that it proves nothing, and is nothing but rhetoric. How does this prove that the Patriot Act is effective? Like I said before, we need to sacrifice our rights to get agencies to share info? Sounds like the correct solution would be to get some training, and start firing a lot of people, starting at the top and working down the chain until they figure it out. Punishing the American people for safety is idiotic and unconstitutional. Benjamin Franklin once said " He who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety."

Wow, you said "We may be violating his rights but we could also be saving many innocent countless lives in the process." So in other words, it's ok to violate a person so long as someone else could possibly be saved... By that reasoning I should be allowed to rape your mom in the back room of your house, because by keeping her off the streets, I could be saving untold numbers of people from the very real possibility of her getting into an auto accident. Who cares if I am violating her rights? I could be saving Americans!

"If the Patriot act means questioning a hundred so called terrorist I am for it, if it even saves ‘just one’ American life." What if these "terrorists" are American also? So the mere accusation of being a terrorist eliminates the rights granted to you under our constitution? Then fine, I am a U.S. Government official, and I have as much authority as the next guy, so I declare YOU a terrorist... I assume that you will now go to the nearest police station and turn yourself in for 'questioning'. You seem to be so eager to subject others to this treatment, I am certain that you will go through it yourself eagerly and with zeal right?

The scenarios I posed above are everybit as ridiculous (if not substantially less) then your entire statement.

It seems you my friend, are the only person in this thread who understands why we all joined the military, and what we are actually here fighting for. I sacrificed my freedom so you all can have yours. If you people are so ready and willing to surrender that freedom, I might as well just go the hell home and masturbate until the Bush Administration's gestapo comes to collect me for interrogation.

I can't help but notice that the two biggest conservatives in this thread, are also the two youngest people in the thread. I wish I still had that kind of faith in the system, it's cute to see it in others. But as time goes on and you get more and more life experience, you will begin to see things are not nearly as idealistic as nebraskaboy and RHS would seem to think.

Why are the young always so eager to surrender their rights to whoever is willing to take them?