Some NSA Questions

From Leon H at Redstate.org, this some simple questions:

...if it's not legal for an NSA listening station, outside the country, to "detect" the communications of our enemies, wherever they might happen to lead (and most especially to operatives within our country's borders), what in the heck do we have an NSA for? Let me put it this way, if the New York Times had reported that in the wake of 9/11, the NSA was not "detecting" the international communications of known Al Qaeda operatives because they couldn't get FISA warrants to do so, don't you think this same group of caterwauling liberals would be calling Bush incompetent on that basis? And if, under that imaginary scenario, Al Qaeda hit us again, and it was determined that we had cell phone numbers/etc. of the people who carried out the attacks but didn't tap them because of concerns about getting a warrant under a statute written in the 70s, do you really think we'd ever hear the end of the bloviating from Reid, et al - not to mention the has-been gasbags they'd inevitably dig up for the blue-ribbon finger-pointing commission?

The answer to each of these questions is sad.