January 24, 2006
Nothing is good enough for some
Once again, our fine President is making the rounds campaign style to mollify the public about one of his unjustifiable choices and convince people to just trust him because he knows and is always doing what is best for all of us. He’s really got little credibility left with the whole believe me shtick, especially when the message he’s trying to deliver is essentially, “I’m spying on Americans without warrants and without real Congressional oversight, but I’m only spying the bad guys and without this program they’re sure to getcha.”
Bush assures everyone who will listen that his “terrorist surveillance program” is out there doing good, and since he talked to a whole bunch of lawyers, he’s certain this is all legal and proper. The problem is his actions are probably not legal, and even if, as he asserts, they are authorized by Congress in it’s post 9/11 anti-terrorist legislation, they we unnecessary. The Foreign Intelligence Court was set up for just such a situation as this. Bush could easily have spied on all the terrorists he wanted and even started his fun spying games before the warrants were issued, all without breaking the law. But FISA apparently is not good enough for George W. Bush and his band of loyal attorneys. If he’s going to spy on people and says he’s not going to abuse that power we should all believe him.
Of course he asked us all to believe that the mission was accomplished, or no child would be left behind or Iraq was harboring dangerous weapons and Al Qaeda terrorists. Oh yeah, this is the guy who hides more documents and protects secrecy more stridently than any previous president. He’s the guy who threatened to veto a bill banning torture and had his campaign people work at trashing John McCain’s reputation back when they were rivals for the Republican nomination six years back.
Our fine President is out on tour again, spreading his message of cheer and giving the brush at his Crawford ranch a must needed rest from his incessant clearing. He’s prepping for the big State of the Union to do and working at changing the minds of the masses about his motives, intentions and even past actions. He’s out selling insurance upon which he prays he’ll never have to deliver. But this time it really has to stop. There’s hints and news bits about further reaches of this program and if you follow the new language the administration is using they’re talking very specifically about one program now and not the general principle of spying on Americans. Could there be other programs still undiscovered?
The pres and his boys continue to say this program could have prevented 9/11 if it’d been in place back then. Of course the 9/11 Commission proved that it all could have been prevented if our intelligence services worked together more efficiently too. I don’t understand why this hasn’t been the main strategy. Improving the coordination of our existing intelligence and security operations seems to me to be a lot less of a hassle than starting a whole new program of nebulous legality just to catch a few overseas phone calls to get information we might not translate or pass along to anyone who can do anything with it anytime soon.