All of a sudden today there is furious activity on the right seeking to garner support for Bush’s policy of authorizing warrantless wiretaps (otherwise known as “I’ll defend the Constitution unless it conflicts with whatever the hell I want to do” policy). First up to the plate: Vice President Dick Cheney.
Vice President Dick Cheney offered a robust defense of the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program Thursday, calling it an essential tool in monitoring the activities of al-Qaida and associated terrorist organizations. But he stressed the program was limited in scope and had been conducted in a way that safeguarded civil liberties.
In a luncheon speech at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, Cheney warned that the United States still faced significant threats from a network of terrorists intent on establishing a radical Islamic empire throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. […]
“A spirit of debate is now underway, and our message to the American people is clear and straightforward: These actions are within the president’s authority and responsibility under the constitution and laws, and these actions are vital to our security,” Cheney said.
I’ve highlighted the phrase “vital to our security” because I suspect that is going to be a frequent Republican talking point over the next few days as the various and sundry Bush apologists on the right make the rounds of Fox, MsNBC and CNN to push the meme that not only is it legal, it’s “vital to our security.”
But the good veep was hardly the only one standing up for the President’s authority to tap your phones, and internet connections. Here’s the eponymous Max Boot in the LA Times discounting fears over the President’s “surveillance program”:
. . . [A]lthough the government has occasionally blundered, it has also used its enhanced post-9/11 powers to keep us safe. The National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps, which have generated so much controversy, helped catch, among others, a naturalized American citizen named Iyman Faris who pleaded guilty to being part of an Al Qaeda plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge.
No wonder polls show that most people continue to support Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism. As long as federal surveillance remains targeted on the country’s enemies, not on the president’s, the public will continue to yawn at hyperbolic criticisms of the commander in chief.
Shorter Max: You can sleep tight tonight now that Daddy Bush has your back, and all your personal information too. It’s better to be safe than free anyway.
And lest we forget the coming battle over the renewal of the Patriot Act, well here’s Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) to remind us how vital it is to our security:
Patriot Act renewal vital to security
Rep. Mike Turner
. . . The Patriot Act has played a key role in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from terrorists.
There should be no safe zone, no sanctuary, for terrorists in America. This fight is way too important. The Patriot Act helps ensure that terrorists have no safe zone.
Yes, I remember the tremendous value of the Patriot Act in allowing the feds to secretly monitor anti-war groups. And of allowing the FBI to go through the file of books checked out at your local library. I’m sure we are all safer as the result of such offcially sanctioned intimidation.
Of course, the ultimate in message manipulation comes to us courtesy of Attorney General Gonzales and his busy beavers at the Justice Department as they present the brief for defending the indefensible:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department, facing lawsuits and congressional hearings on President George W. Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program, sought on Thursday to persuade congressional leaders the surveillance was lawful and did not violate civil liberties.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who plans to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on February 6, sent a report to Capitol Hill outlining the legal basis for the National Security Agency’s activities that Bush approved after the September 11 attacks. […]
“These NSA activities are lawful in all respects,” Gonzalez said in a letter to Senate leaders in releasing the Justice Department’s 42-page legal analysis.
“They represent a vital effort by the president to ensure that we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack on America,” he said.
There’s that word “vital” popping up again. Big surprise, eh?
And big surprise “Abu” Gonzales sees nothing illegal in wiretapping his fellow American citizens without a warrant. This is, after all, the man who also defended Bush’s program of idefinitely detaining American citizens so long as the President can designate them “enemy combatants” (Jose Padilla anyone?) as well as why what we’re doing at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharaib and God knows where else (Poland? Uzbekistan?) isn’t really torture, despite all those poor sods who just happened to die while in our custody.
In any event, the Right’s full court press is on: Be afraid, be very afraid! That’s a Presidential directive.
Thanks Steven,
For another well researched story.
I had just posted the below in the Open Thread, just before you posted.
It is almost official.
Raw Story:
He’s a lonely PRICK!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
That’s all. Just wanted to do that.
most effective and most often used tool.
None of the media blockheads ever think to ask why there were no domestic terror incidents between 1993 and 2001. Did warrantless wiretaps provide these eight years of “safety”?
Whatever the reason for this current interval, it most certainly can’t be attributed to any actions taken by our “commander-in-chief”.
Fear is always the most powerful weapon in the arsenals of tyrants.
I just wanted to say that you and rba provide some of the very best comments on the site, and yet, I can’t remember either of you writing any diaries.
I hope you do sometime, because my guess is that they would be fantastic.
rba has a bunch of diary entries to his (?) name.
BooMan,
Thank you so much for the extraordinary compliment.
About diarying. I’ve started to write diaries here several times, but in this last year and a half or so I don’t seem to be able to bring those diaries to a concise and succesful conclusion. In some cases this is because I don’t always have the sort of sustained stamina and focus required to do the research neccesary to confirm facts that validate my opinions and conclusions, (recent health reasons play a role in fragmenting my pursuit of research with the result, as you may be familiar with, that once one breaks off from a line of specific inquiry it is often very difficult to pick up the thread again after an interruption). And sometimes, as you remarked the other day, there is simply so much stuff swimming around in my head that I’m unable to grab hold of any of it and distill it into words.
Sometimes too, I feel the ingrained pessimism that often informs my perspective is counterproductive in a way that makes me not want to inflict too much of a dark view upon my fellow Tribbers here. After all, I applaud the enthusiasm and the earnest idealism and the genuine seeking for optimistic, practical solutions to the major dilemnas of the day even if I do not always share that gusto. So, in a way I am often reluctant to bring my perspectives of darker realities to the forefront in a way that might be seen as discouraging to others.
So, in the short term I think I’ll stick with commenting, and hope that my comments are experienced as useful and, when appropriate, provocative, in the sens that they may have the effect of encouraging others to percieve different perspectives that might be useful, in the same way that I derive so much from the comments of all you fellow BooTribbers.
Having said all this now, (and acknowledging that certainly some of my comments are long enough to be diaries), I will now redouble my efforts to do perhaps a short diary on a topic that may not require too much pessimism as part of it’s reality-based foundation.
And thanks again for the compliment. It means a lot to me.
P.S. I think rba does write diaries/articles on another site, (is it E. Pluribus Media.
Just type your stuff. There are people who do research and put in all the links, all nerdified, and they are wonderful, and thank all applicable deities for them.
But there are also those of us who just rant, and if people want links to back up our opinions then they can probably find them in the diaries of those researchers and linkers, because it is not like we ranters make stuff up.
We just assume people have already read whatever link would, in their mind, back up the rant.
So let ’em rip. 🙂
It’s the relationship between verifiable fact and analytical perspective that (mostly) informs my ability, (such as it may be), to write.
I spent most of the late ’60s through the mid ’70s in a state of rant, often times an inarticulate rant that was only marginally effective, and effective even then only because therewere literally 10’s of millions of us united in opposition to the insanity of the Vietnam debacle and the military-industrial psychopathsand their governmental allies who engineered the whole thing.
I actually do still rant. I yell at the TV sometimes when I hear a particularly shit-filled wingnut or media mannequin spouting ludicrous bullshit, and I even yell out loud at my computer scree when reading idiotic screeds by co-opted media hacks and flacks. But, as much as I am able I don’t want to write that way. and besides, there are already plenty of great ranters out there.
I will, however, take you excellent advice, as well as BooMan’s and others’ previous encouragements to heart and just write and post some diaries. I appreciate the push from all of you and know I need such prodding sometimes, since I frequently find myself trying to be so precise in what I’m saying that I just can’t find a way to finish the thought or concept I set out to explore.
So thanks DTF.
The other part to that is that they HAVE been doing warrant-less wiretaps since 9-11 and/or 2000 and STILL Bin Lauden is free. So they are wiretapping us and not catching the terrorists. (the logic may be faulty but hey, who notices a little detail like that anymore)
MercuryNews.com | 01/19/2006 | Feds after Google data
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government’s effort “vigorously.”
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,” Wong said.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines know about their users.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.