Freedom's Unfortunate Linkage to Truth
Okay! - even the New York Times is starting to catch on. Too bad they are in the sorry compromised condition of fending off claims of being the primary bastion of the hallucinatory non-existent category of the"liberal press" (it has a sort of holy grail quality, that term, no?) while still obviously tarred by having naively played foster-parents to Ms. Miller while she was swooning girlishly over Mr. Chalabi.
It would be great fun to have access to a "West Wing"-like camera's-eye of the White House these days. The churlishness and scrambling, somewhat immiscible commodities as I see it, should make for some wonderful entertainment. As anyone who has learned to at least augment their tv/newspaper (i.e. corporate media, which is to say, rarely trustworthy news) input with a decent occasional swig of the Net must sense, the whole place has got to be like a pack of third-rate-crooks, with their lie-upon-lie Babel towers threatening to collapse at any moment. I picture overfilled bags of plunder continually being shunted from one closet to the next by folks who make Peter Sellers look like the Prince of Competence, photos, memos, and other incriminating evidence continually at risk of getting loose.
Frankly, I'm eager for straight-up calling the swine on their swine-ishness wherever I can find it. Just in case they aren't leaving the NYT on your doorstep these days, here's an enticing dollop, delightfully entitled "Spies, Lies and Wiretaps". Please traverse link to full editorial.
A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.
The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.
•
Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."
Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.
[clip]
Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.
[clip]
It would be great fun to have access to a "West Wing"-like camera's-eye of the White House these days. The churlishness and scrambling, somewhat immiscible commodities as I see it, should make for some wonderful entertainment. As anyone who has learned to at least augment their tv/newspaper (i.e. corporate media, which is to say, rarely trustworthy news) input with a decent occasional swig of the Net must sense, the whole place has got to be like a pack of third-rate-crooks, with their lie-upon-lie Babel towers threatening to collapse at any moment. I picture overfilled bags of plunder continually being shunted from one closet to the next by folks who make Peter Sellers look like the Prince of Competence, photos, memos, and other incriminating evidence continually at risk of getting loose.
Frankly, I'm eager for straight-up calling the swine on their swine-ishness wherever I can find it. Just in case they aren't leaving the NYT on your doorstep these days, here's an enticing dollop, delightfully entitled "Spies, Lies and Wiretaps". Please traverse link to full editorial.
A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.
The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.
•
Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."
Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.
[clip]
Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.
[clip]
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:51 PM
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