Al Qaeda is an international terrorist network. We cannot defeat it by conquering territory. It has none. We cannot round up its citizens. Its allegiance is to an ideology that makes nationality irrelevant. To defeat it and defend ourselves, we can onl…

Simple mistrust won’t cut it with me.

The entire edifice of our government is built on mistrust. Without the checks/balances it engenders, the state is liable to start, say, spying on political enemies or going on witch hunts.

So that means we can’t have rule of law. If we do, the terrorists have won, apparently.

It sounds to me like their focus is on maintaining their focus that meets legal definitions.

They use legal-sounding standards, if that’s what you mean. This is still a far cry from obeying the law.

One thing I noticed in this post was that you elided one of the key reasons for the NSA program: they couldn’t meet even the relaxed probably cause burden under FISA, so they just decided not to follow the law.