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Bush Spying on Al Qaeda Only? The Resources Used Were Worthwhile?
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| MisterOpus1 |
No and no.
| quote: | WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
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"We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."
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F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/p...agewanted=print |
Couple things come to mind. First, seems that Bush may have the CIA under wraps, kicking out anyone who isn't a "yes man", but definitely not the FBI just yet.
Good. A little honesty about his ing utter failures and bull lies is quite refreshing.
Second, what a ing collossal waste of time, resources, and money.
And it was all done illegally.
For all you Bush apologists who cheer the need for revamping our intelligence gathering, take a good hard long look at how we are replacing it.
Third, Bush is a ing liar, period. Not only were these wiretaps illegal, but we were spying on Americans, NOT Al Qaeda connections like he continually claims.
In other news, Al Gore yesterday gave a pretty damn good blistering speech against Bush, and much of his speech focused on Bush's illegal domestic spying program. The following quote puts those ing cowards directly on the spot who cower down and want to surrender their rights and liberties to assuage their overwhelming fear. Those who find the Constitution just too quaint and insufficient to guard them against their fright:
| quote: | Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."
The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.
Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.
Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars?
It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same. |
Give me liberty or give me death. That's what our country has fought for so many years. We do not give up these fundamental rights as a means to cower under the guile of fear instilled by our own government. I simply will not allow it.
Gore also called on a special counsel to investigate Bush's illegal wiretaps. Much to all our surprise, I mean outright shock, Abu Ghraib Gonzales, I mean Attorney General Gonzales calls that notion off:
| quote: | KING: Back to former Vice President Gore asking for a special counsel to investigate, would you object to that?
GONZALES: Well, I don't know why -- I don't know why there would be a need for a special counsel at this time, Larry, because what I can tell you is that from the very beginning, from its inception this program has been carefully reviewed by the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration and we firmly believe that the president does have the legal authority to authorize electronic surveillance in order to gather up foreign intelligence particularly, Larry, when we're talking about foreign intelligence of the enemy in a time of war.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../16/lkl.01.html |
Shocking, ain't it? Having Bush's special little bitch say that it's just so unnecessary, and hey it's all legal anyway, right?
Don't cha just love a guy who narrowly defines "torture" to organ failure only?
I guess it will have to take our Congress to call hearings, as well as lawsuits in the courts to bring this to the attention of Bush and his ing lying Administration:
| quote: | Two leading civil rights groups say they plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East.
The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program.
Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably vigorously oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds....
One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, said that a Stanford student studying in Egypt conducts research for him on political opposition groups, and that he worried that communications between them on sensitive political topics could be monitored. "How can we communicate effectively if you risk being intercepted by the National Security Agency?" Mr. Diamond said.
Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group.
http://nytimes.com/2006/01/17/polit...artner=homepage |
Then again, if such lawsuits reach up to the Supreme Court, and we have a bunch of GOP supporters on that Court who believe in Absolute Executive power, even these lawsuits may not ultimately make a dent.
And now we see why Alito and his stance with Absolute Executive power being all hunky dory might actually come into play here.
Bush may be a liar, but he ain't dumb. Manipulative and cunning, but definitely not dumb. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
I might also add that Gonzales himself is a big fat ing liar. In his attempts to defend Bush's actions as well as his own, he tries to smear Gore by outright lying:
| quote: | Gonzales: I would say that with respect to comments by the former vice president it’s my understanding that during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding the physical searches without warrants, Aldrich Ames as an example.
I can also say that it’s my understanding that the deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant and so those would certainly seem to be inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../16/lkl.01.html |
We've covered this before, and this GOP talking point has been debunked numerous times already. But in true Bush-speak fashion, this Administration and its minions continually repeat the lie in hopes that it becomes true.
It just won't happen, because this is what happened back then:
| quote: | 1. Prior to 1995, FISA did not cover physical searches. (With Clinton’s signature, the law was expanded to cover physical searches in 1995.) The search of Aldrich Ames home occurred in 1993. It did not violate FISA.
2. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified in 1994 that the President could conduct warrantless physical searches, before FISA required physical searches to be conducted pursuant to a warrant. Gorelick was arguing that the President could conduct warrantless physical searches in the absence of Congressional action. At no time did she suggest that, after Congress required the President to obtain a warrant, the executive branch could ignore the law, nor is there any evidence the Clinton administration failed to comply with FISA.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/17...es-smears-gore/ |
The physical searches argument when taken in full context is easily debunked with actual history, not a revisionist one. Yet this Adminstration see to it to deliberately revise history and blatantly take issues right out of context.
Now I wonder why they are resorting to such trivial, fallacious tactics? Could it be that they're running out of excuses for their illegal actions?
Come on, Abu Gonzales, you can't be at the end of your rope yet? |
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