December 26, 2005

King George Bush and Wiretaps - Tall Tales, Big Lies

Oy. As Ezra notes ...

So, the two primary examples Bush used to support his program were total fabrications. And yet we're supposed to blindly trust him to carry out a massive, secret espionage operation.

Apparently - but hopefully we won't be so naive. Or stupid.

And quite apart from the issues related to our threatened constitutional protections, I for one would feel a lot safer in this age of terrorism if the president wasn't so mind-bogglingly inept. I mean the one thing this guy and Karl Rove are supposedly good at is framing issues and winning a sort of vague backing for their course of action (at least the backing of 50.01% on issues tied to terrorism and security). If the White House is suddenly unable to come up with even plausible lies to use in selling their side of the story ... just how out of control are things in the West Wing?

Posted by armand at December 26, 2005 04:37 PM | TrackBack | Posted to The Ever Shrinking Constitution


Comments

You do know that wire taps have been used by virtually every president in recent history, right? I mean, you have to know that. This is nothing new.

Posted by: big country at December 29, 2005 12:38 AM | PERMALINK

And are routinely used by the FBI. Sure. The part you leave out is following the rules of law. Like the difference between selling viagra at the pharmacy and selling meth on the street.

Posted by: binky at December 29, 2005 10:34 AM | PERMALINK

Big country - see Binky.

The scary thing here isn't the wiretaps. Of course the government uses wiretaps. That's not the problem. The problem is that the president has knowingly, and repeatedly (really really really really repeatedly) ordered government agents to do things that quite clearly are illegal. And not only that, he's expressed every intention of continuing to do it (and of course more or less said that anyone who questions his right to break this law is in bed with the terrorists). Since when is it appropriate to let presidents routinely (for years on end!)break the law?

If it's so important to him, and the threat is so grave, he's had YEARS to change the law. In the post 9/11 environment it's unlikely such a push would have been blocked. But he hasn't worked within our system of government and laws - even though the system is dominated by his own partisans and anything that could have been reasonably labeled a national security concern would have flown through Congress in '02 or '03.

Instead, he's instead routinely flouted the law FOR YEARS. I ask again - why on Earth is that acceptable?

Posted by: Armand at December 29, 2005 11:21 AM | PERMALINK

If Bush had broken any law, the liberals in Congress would be on him so fast that your head would spin. Why do liberals always seem to take the side of the enemy and not America? If this was a Democrat doing this to protect us, nothing would be said.

Bush acted within the law, as he always has. We could have legally gone to war with Iraq after the very first UN Resolution was broken, but we didnt. We waited for 12 years before saying enough is enough. I can only hope that our next president fights terror as strongly as Bush has.

Posted by: big country at December 29, 2005 08:00 PM | PERMALINK

Uh - what Democrat can go after him? Attorney General Gonzalez could, the leadership of the Congress could - but the Dems don't have any power base to go after him. They can decry his activities but they don't have the ability to go after him, even though it's clear he's been breaking the law for years and has publicly announced his intention to continue to break it (anyway you look at it, it appears abundantly obvious that he broke the FISA law; it's debateable if he did something unconstitutional, but it appears crystal clear that he acted illegally - go read Bob Barr or a number of other rock-ribbed conservatives who'll admit to that). Bush has successfully cowed the Republicans who could go after him - and is likely benefiting from having named a staunch Bush friend and loyalist to head the Justice Department. It appears that the rule of law - American law - is less important to the Republicans than their fear of the president and Karl Rove (or so it would appear).

And I find it a rather audacious and offensive comment to assert that standing up for American law is helping the enemy. Did you even read what Binky and I wrote above - Bush can do all kinds of things to protect the country. But it should be done in certain ways - ways that match our laws and beliefs. In fact we are launching wars and spending gigantic buckets of cash to see to it that the rest of the world (or some of it) is more likely to also act according to those ways. By throwing the law aside it's the president who's being thoroughly unAmerican.

Posted by: Armand at December 29, 2005 10:13 PM | PERMALINK

big country, as W is wont to tell us, the enemy hates us for our freedom. dragnet surveillance in clear violation of law and at least debatably in violation of the constitution is a direct blow to the core of our defining freedoms.

do the math.

Posted by: moon at December 30, 2005 10:29 AM | PERMALINK
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