Remember him?

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

- John Dean 6/11/2003

Eye of the hurricane

A relative calm descended over Baghdad today. That is what the imposition of martial law tends to do...

Meanwhile the armageddon hungry extremists are getting exactly what they want

Please disperse, there is nothing to see here

Citing his supreme goal of accommodating the current administration, Pat Roberts has announced there will be no investigation of the warrentless wiretapping debacle at this time. The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee, charged with the oversight of the entire government's intelligence implementation, has decided no oversight is currently needed. Jay Rockefeller sighed at the impending irrelevance of his committee while the rest of Washington went "woohoo, it's Friday!"

"I believe that such an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program and efforts to reach some accommodation with the administration," Roberts said.

Meanwhile, the House Intel Committee has agreed to launch their own investigation and Cheney announced he'd shoot Rockefeller in the face on February 29th, 2006

It's the coverup, stupid

This administration is so obsessed with the coverup, that even when Cheney shoots a 78 year old friend in the face, they still can't come clean. Watch as Scott McClellan blames the victim for neglecting the hunting rules:

The protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington

even though the official accident report clearly faults Cheney as the error was caused by the hunter's judgement, not the victim's. Could it be that they don't want the #2 in charge to appear as incompetent as his boss?

Deep black

Perhaps you've not heard of Russell Tice, the former NSA officer who's blowing the whistle on the "domestic/terrorist surveillance program." He claims to be a major source in the original NYT article, for which many on the right would like to see him hanged, shot or otherwise swift-boated. He was on Democracy Now not long ago. He would like to give Congress information about the depths of this program which "no one knows about yet." Perhaps it's time at least Congress did...

And the president—I'm a Republican, I voted for this guy. I've always given him the benefit of the doubt. I didn't like the PATRIOT Act; I don't like a lot of what I've seen. But I've always felt that this president, in his heart, felt he was doing his best to protect the American people. I thought PATRIOT, and throwing the key away on Jose Padilla, were unconstitutional, but I've always given him the benefit of the doubt. I'm certainly hoping that he's been misled, and that if a broad-brush approach was used that the president wasn't aware of it or didn't understand the ramifications, that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans could have their rights violated. But if that happened and the president knew totally the extent of it, and everything we're hearing now is just damage control from the White House... Well, some time ago, we impeached a president for cheating on his wife, which as far as I'm concerned should've been between his family, his wife, and if he believes in one his God upstairs. When it comes to high crimes and misdemeanors, knowingly and willingly doing this and then being arrogant about it and saying we're going to continue doing it—I would certainly think falls into that category of high crimes. — Russell Tice

Habitual line-steppers

Gonzales has acknowledged that Al-Qaeda to Al-Qaeda phone conversations that originate and end within the United States are not monitored by the 'terrorist surveillance program' but has just stated that they are using 'all other methods' to monitor solely domestic conversations. Gonzales acknowledges that the NSA wiretapping is still constrained by the Fourth Amendment which requires that searches and seizures be "reasonable." As obtuse as that may sound, reasonable means that a fair amount of the searches and seizures must be captures of illegal activity. Yesterday's WashPo uses internal documents and sources to prove that this argument no longer holds water. A "fair amount" would be roughly 1 in every 2 seizures. The electronic monitoring methods being used are nowhere near that standard and would thus be considered "unreasonable" and therefore unconstitutional.

Gonzales has now acknowledged that there was no Congressional declaration of war

§ 1811. Authorization during time of war:
Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.

Bush has said he will do whatever it takes, without Congressional authorization, but for some reason is drawing the line at international communications? They can use special wartime executive powers to ignore FISA and they can compile databases on domestic peace activist organizations, but we're just supposed to trust that they won't connect the dots?

The beginning of the end

Rummy is telling us to sit tight during the generational conflict which was otherwise known as the war on terror, or depending on the audience, the war on evil. Comparing Osama to Adolf and Vladimir, he thinks we are facing an enemy that wants to "rule the world", just as he did in 1976 when he attempted to convince us that the USSR was after the same thing. This despite the fact that Al Qaida has given no indication of any desire to rule the world. Maybe they'd like a theocratic, orthodox Muslim state from which they could launch terror strikes and make women wear really unflattering clothes, but seriously, rule the freaking world? Have they marched into Poland? Are they amassing troops on the Mongolian borders of China? While radical Islamic fundamentalists have expressed a desire to spread theocracy on a global scale, does anyone actually believe that would be realistically possible? They will never have the capability to launch ICBMs to the earth's remote corners, manufacture Ipods or even command a unified army. Osama is no more able to control the loose international network of jihadists than Bush is able to control stability in Iraq.

"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," Rumsfeld said.

Or perhaps the long-term erosion of civil liberties, suppression of dissent and forced, military imposition of democracy by an Orwellian, imperial overlord breeds a global anarchic rebellion whose only goal is violent, but futile resistance. Just like the adulterer who is convinced their spouse is cheating, these chronically tunnel-visioned neo-cons are just as positively convinced that their enemy is after the same goal as them.
As the Flav so succinctly said a few years back, don't believe the hype!