President Bush, demanding "flexibility" in the pursuit of suspected terrorists, insisted Wednesday he would not sign a new domestic spying bill if it unduly limits the administration’s authority to eavesdrop without warrants.
The president is demanding corporate immunity from lawsuits against telecommunications companies that have aided the National Security Agency in a controversial warrantless wiretapping program, as well as authority to secretly monitor suspect communications that pass through the United States.
But congressional leaders, insisting on court oversight of the administration’s surveillance, are not willing to give the president the latitude he is seeking. And they are reluctant to release companies from liability for their roles in the government’s program without learning much more about the details of this surveillance.
With House leaders planning to take their legislation to the floor next week, a new confrontation with the White House looms over the renewal of the terrorist surveillance law set to expire in February. And the president is entering that debate with warnings about the threat of terrorism.
"Terrorists in faraway lands are plotting and planning new ways to kill Americans," Bush said Wednesday on the South Lawn of the White House as House leaders rolled out their bill. "The security of our country and the safety of our citizens depend on learning about their plans."
"How," you ask "does ‘corporate immunity from lawsuits against telecommunications companies‘ have anything to do with ‘Terrorists in faraway lands are plotting and planning new ways to kill Americans‘?" Only in places like Oz do such absurdities make any sense. In Oz, the telecommunications corporations tell the Wizard that they aren’t going to keep doing what he wants unless they get some protection [because they know it’s unamerican and illegal]. They might even know it’s un-necessary since the F.I.S.A. Court would approve anything remotely reasonable. The only possible reason that the Wizard would want such a thing is so he could ‘data mine’ – listen indiscriminantly. There’s another possibility – that his vice president is so intensely paranoid that he doesn’t want any oversight of any kind – like his recent quote about not writing memos so the future researchers can’t nail him. So the Wizard is trying to get Congress to follow the yellow brick road again.
He did this earlier. The C.I.A. Agents balked at continuing to use torture, so he fought for them to be immune from prosecution. He got what he wanted and it was the same thing as approving a torture program. They’ve been at it ever since. I say, "Screw the Wizard!" Let him veto anything he wants to veto. That’s his right as Wizard. One day we’ll send the huckster back to Kansas to sell more snake oil. But there’s no reason to legitimize his Cheney-esque craziness. He’s just a little man behind a curtain. [If he was so into learning the Terrorists’ plans, why did the White House leak the Bin Laden tape to Fox News and shut down our access to al Qaeda on the Internet?]…
“Terrorists in faraway lands are plotting and planning new ways to kill Americans,”
So, his plan is to send more Americans over there for them to kill? Because isn’t that what the surge did?
Maybe WE should be pressing Congress to let US know what the hell Bush and Cheney are talking about on their “private” lines. The last I knew we, the American people, still fund the White House.
My psyche has been so beat down over that last couple of years by what our govt. has been doing in the name of ‘freedom’, that the world has right itself upside down.
I no longer even think about the looking glass, for I find myself inside, looking out.
What Bush and Co have perpetrated in the name of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’ in their ‘War on Terror’ is so brutal, so incandescent, so purely cynical that I am just in a state of shock.
Last Sunday I went to a party in which I met an old man who had been an engineer for the NSA and the CIA, building satellites. Now, retired, he has woken up, and could not stop ranting about the state of our nation. I made a crack about the only good thing about the Bush administration was the way they were going to be treated by history. He looked at me in disbelief, and said that that was the way he felt about the Reagan Admin, and look on how people of today wax poetic about ‘The Gipper’
What a mess, and the DNC continues to prove that they are slaves to there own distorted view of ‘Public Opinion’ and FUD.
Good Greif !