The Political Chase

Change

Some things change and some things remain the same. From the WP:

That Was Then

" During my stewardship here, I’m going to put everybody under oath when we have testimony, as we do on confirmation hearings."

Judiciary Committee Chairman
Arlen Specter, April 5, 2005

This Is Now

"It is my judgment that it is unnecessary to swear the witness."

Specter, declining to put Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales under oath, Feb. 6, 2006

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Pin the Tail on the Donkey

Interesting. Who has WMD’s (or close to it) and who did not have WMD’s. From State of War.

If the rest of the administration was eager to take on Saddam Hussein, the post-9/11 climate was completely different at the CIA, where the war against Osama bin Laden was all-consuming. If there was one other long-term threat that worried the agency’s leadership, it was not Iraq, but Iran, with its burgeoning nuclear weapons program and its close ties to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.

“It is hard for people outside the agency to understand how little we were thinking about Iraq,” recalled one top intelligence official. The CIA’s lack of focus on Iraq – and in particular, the agency’s failure to see Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States – infuriated the administration’s hard-liners [Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz]. They believed that the opportunity for war with Iraq presented by the attacks on New York and Washington could best be exploited by linking Baghdad to 9/11. Failing that, it might be possible to tie Iraq more generally to al Qaeda.

It Is Worse Than Watergate

I know there has been a lot of activity today - Brownie’s testimony, the president’s diversionary tactics announcing the ten "foiled" (not) plots, additional discussion on Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the allegations of CIA agent, Paul R. Pillar and other things. I have kept up with those items, but have not taken the time to address them on TPC today. I placed a priority on reading James Risen’s, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

Everybody has access to MSM, but not everyone will read Risen’s book. Given that, I wanted to provide exposure and discussion on something of great importance, but not necessarily at everyone’s fingertips. As I go through this book, I find something on almost every page that is noteworthy, but of course, I can’t do that for all the obvious reasons.

Dick Cheney and George Bush have sorely misled the American people. I know everyone is aware of that, but it merits repeating. Risen makes this abundantly clear in the passages quoted below.

“[J]ust days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use ‘electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses.’ Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks, he wrote, "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties.’

 "During the public debate over the Patriot Act, Bush administration officials noted reassuringly that the legislation would not expand the powers of the NSA, as if to underscore their arguments that privacy concerns over the Patriot Act were being exaggerated by critics of the legislation. Even Yoo made the point, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, that the Patriot Act’s critics had a cartoonish view of the law. ‘Civil libertarians would have us believe that the Patriot Act allows CIA and NSA agents roam freely through the country detaining anyone they please,’ Yoo wrote. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’"

These are not the most notable paragraphs I have read in terms of revelations, but they strike at the very core of what is so terribly wrong with this administration. And I don’t say that simply because of the NSA violating FISA. This is one size fits all. It covers virtually everything that this administration does and stands for.

There were no WMD’s in Iraq. We know the president lied about that.

Dick Cheney, at minimum, was deeply entangled in Plamegate. We know that many, including Dick Cheney, have lied about that.

The president broke the laws of the United States by carrying out warrantless domestic surveillance. We know he and many others lied about that.

To my point. We know the administration is a vast group of corrupt felons, and liars, but it exacerbates the matter exponentially when the administration makes bold face lies, dupes us, and then carries out these high crimes. Why was it so necessary to publish propaganda as Yoo did? The NSA was well under way with "The Project." It was uber-top secret - nobody knew, therefore they had no reason to be in a defensive mode. Yet, the administration sends one of their legal beagles out to act as the town crier and slings bullshit in our faces such as Yoo’s op-ed. If the administration truly felt they were constitutionally justified, why was it necessary to even bring the matter of civil liberties up?

Doing the dastardly deed is bad enough, but to blatantly lie and dissuade the American people on top of it when it wasn’t even necessary…well, to use the words of the Veep, it is reprehensible.

It carries the stench of psychopathic crooks and liars.

Technorati Tags : George+Bush, Dick+Cheney, NSA, FISA, James+Risen, State+of+War, terrorism, John+Yoo, Politics

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