Must-read editorial in today’s New York Times:
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 rest of the editorial goes over ground already covered by The Mahablog, but read it anyway. It’s a first-rate synopsis of the ongoing atrocity known as “the Bush Administration’s justification for warrantless wiretapping.”
When you are done with the editorial, head on over to Newsweek for “Palace Revolt” by Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas. This provides new insight in how the above-mentioned ongoing atrocity came into being, and how some Justice Department attorneys — conservative Bush appointees, no less — stood their ground against the infamous “torture memo” and the White House’s circumvention of FISA.
Then, still at Newsweek, see Jonathan Alter’s “The Political Power of Truth.” A pinch:
For four and a half years, Bush has politicized 9/11. His political motto has been “The only thing we have to use is fear itself.” He was at it again last week, claiming with zero evidence that congressional scrutiny of the illegal NSA wiretapping would “give the enemy a heads-up on what we’re doing.” The media and the Democrats have both been intimidated by this devastatingly effective political strategy. It won the 2002 and 2004 elections for the Republicans and will continue to be their game plan for this November.
At first glance, making the Democrats seem soft on “terrorist surveillance” looks like another winner for the GOP. For Democrats to explain that they don’t oppose all eavesdropping but object to the way it was done is a two-step answer that’s too complicated to fly. A better approach would be to argue that Bush’s NSA program has been a failure because it has threatened civil liberties and violated the law without doing anything to catch Osama bin Laden. The NSA obviously hasn’t been eavesdropping on the right suspects.
This would fit with the Democrats’ idea of fighting fear with failure—Bush’s failure. New polls show his approval ratings in the dismal low 40s, with strong majorities believing he has failed on every score except keeping the country safe. (A majority of those polled not surprisingly support Bush on eavesdropping on terror suspects domestically. So do I. But when the constitutional questions are raised, his numbers drop.) To confront the security issue, Wesley Clark is chairing a PAC to help the nine Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans running for Congress as Democrats (versus one as a Republican). The idea is to adopt the Rovean strategy of attacking your opponent’s strength.
Will it work? In recent years, failure and incompetence have been trounced by fear at the ballot box. The former is based on reason and an examination of the facts; the latter on emotion, with 9/11 as a trump card. But now reality may be making a comeback, as Bush’s authority breaks into a million little pieces.
This sounds like a plan. General Clark’s WesPAC is doing a lot of good stuff and deserves more attention, IMO.
I dropped in here for respite during a hard slog transcribing a long interview with James Risen (NYTimes reporter NSA, author of new book on spying) about the process and technology of eavesdropping and the political convolutions of the Administration. Carpal tunnel syndromesville!
Eventually it will get done, god willin’, and I’ll drop by and let you know where to find the transcription. I find it fascinating. For example:
Risen:…The chief judge of the FISA court, who was a woman federal judge, had growing concerns about the program. One of the reasons that she appeared to be concerned and that there were growing concerns within the Justice Department at that time about the potential that the government was seeking search warrants for eavesdropping on people in other cases that were not covered by the secret NSA program, but using as justification and evidence to get those warrants information that had been gathered through this warrantless search. In other words, there was a growing concern that possibly illegally obtained evidence from this NSA operation was being used then in courts to get search warrants in other cases. And so that concern was growing in 2004. And that was one of the issues that led both to the concerns of the chief judge of the FISA court, who was only notified of the program and who was never asked to approve it, and to the Justice Department. And that’s a concern that’s still there today. After our story ran, one of the judges on the FISA court resigned because he’d never known about the program until our story ran. He’s concerned about the possibility that search warrants had been issues based on potentially illegally obtained evidence.
Q: Do you have any idea what standards the NSA has used to decide when it’s appropriate for them to by pass the court and just directly conduct surveillance?
Risen: No. One of the things that they’ve done in this program is that they’ve allowed NSA to decide on its own who to listen to. The NSA doesn’t even have to get approval for each specific eavesdropping operation from the Justice Department or the White House or anybody else…
Get those dissenting lawyers in the administration in front of Specter’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the NSA program to testify about the reasons for their internal opposition. It is necessary to demponstrate how widespread–if hidden–the opposition to the Bush laws-breakikng was and is. Get ’em to testify if if it means subpoena to get them in front of the Committee and camera.
Charles
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10789266/
The Dems need to attack on Iraq..They already have an advantage in numbers of people who realize it had nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorism..The waste in money, lives and moral standing has weakened our national security The Dems need to link every political issue to Iraq, like Bush has done to secure his power by linking every issue to 9/11. Iraq is the Achilies heel for the Bush adminisration, it encompasses every incompetence, arrogance,corruption, and deceit that the Bush administration is composed of.
Pretty powerful language from the MSM. They are starting to sound like the supposedly shrill left wing blogosphere.
‘big dangerous lies’, ‘politicized 9/11’, ‘failure and incompetence trounced by fear.’
That’s what liberals have been saying for years.
After 9/11, I could feel the Bush administration’s propaganda like a punch in the gut every time I turned on the television. It drove me to the internet to start looking at the information. I’d never really been that concerned about politics before, but I viscerally knew that Bush was lying to the public. And subsequent events have demonstrated that I and millions of others were correct.
Steve Nichols pretty sums it up.
I Really, really, really want the Anthrax attack investigation opened up. I’m surprised the press hasn’t held Bush’s feet to the fire on that one. It was the largest biological attack on Americans since the native Americans were given small pox infected clothing and blankets two hundred years ago.The Anthrax attack was NOT from Arab terrorists. Whom ever did it must be exposed and punished, and ASAP. The Anthrax attack enabled the Bush administration to attack Iraq, without it, the fear factor would not have been high enough.I think the Anthrax mystery is the Achilles heel, the War In Iraq follows, even though it is a huge blunder, no Americans were intentionally killed.I’m not saying Bush was involved or knows the particulars of the crime, but someone close to the Govt. surely does.The truth is out there.
Erinyes- you are right on. The anthrax thing is the string to pull.It was an inside job to instill fear into Dems and media and put the world on notice of how bad WMD in the right places could create panic. Obviously reading about the cabal in Cheney’s office( the palace revolt article), we see what the agenda has been all along- Addingtom attempting to control DOJ( and Ashcroft was not the most radical- he is probably gone because he didn’t want to go along). It shows you all dirt leads back to cheney and his ‘plants’ in the other departments. (Bolton at state with his NSA intercepts.)Obviously it is cheney who wants to game the entire government and judiciary to get the legal basis and precedents for absolutist power. It would appear he is the source and no impeachment would suffice if he is not included.
erinyes….I don’t think we’ll ever find out the answer to who was responsible for the anthrax attacks.. But as far as I can see, the Bush administration was the only one to benefit from the results of the attacks. Oddly, It fit perfectly into their fear mongering agenda. To my mind, proof or no proof, I’ll credit that episode to the Bush camp and rest with a divine assurance that I know, that I know, that I know who bears the responsiblity.
Remember the TV cartoon Felix the Cat?…”Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks..” He was just like the Bush adminisrtation.
The anthrax attack paralyzed the capitol. Remember the main recipients were Dems and members of the “liberal ” media, most of whom have now “retired.” I just finished reading “the palace revolt” over at Antiwar.com. Also Paul Craig Roberts’ latest essay. It certainly leaves me stunned that anyone would follow this administration without question.