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Bush Laid Bare
May. 17th, 2007 12:10 pmThe picture is starting to emerge, and it's not a pretty one. The Bush Administration has been pushing for wiretapping in every imaginable form - phone traffic, email, you name it - probably since day one, and certainly after 9/11. Nor have they limited their surveillance to conversations with a foreign participant, despite their carefully-parsed protests implying the contrary.
Some background: I recently posted the following in a civil liberties community:
Here's the thing: these people aren't interested in anything other than their own political power. They didn't launch this massive, secret program of spying on Americans in order to serve the public good or defend the nation - they did it for their own power and the financial gain of their backers.
Given their utter lack of restraint, their total certainty that they are ordained by God to take whatever they want whenever they want it - trampling the law, public opinion, the truth, and anything else that gets in their way - can anyone honestly believe that these people didn't make use of that surveillance for their own ends? Spy on their political rivals, perhaps? It's a virtual certainty!
These people have made the Nixon Administration look like a troop of boy scouts, so it's a sure thing that they've taken the Watergate model and exceeded it a thousand fold. If/when some instance of that political or corporate abuse of their illegally-seized surveillance power comes to light, things should break wide open - I hope.
Some background: I recently posted the following in a civil liberties community:
If you haven't followed the recent testimony of former Deputy US Attorney General James B. Comey (under John Ashcroft), you're missing an astonishing story of a secret assault on our civil liberties.
Washington Post - Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed - Ailing Ashcroft Pressured on Spy Program, Former Deputy Says
New York Times - President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping
Believe it or not, Comey's testimony makes Ashcroft look good as Attorney General - compared to Gonzales, anyway. Unfortunately C-SPAN doesn't seem to have posted the footage (or at least, I can't find a working link), but a key portion of the testimony has been posted on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmm1W-H8L-4
An mp3 of the entire testimony has can be found here, but when I downloaded it it wouldn't play; I ended up re-converting it, which produced a working version. Unfortunately it's 35 megabytes, and I have nowhere to post it.
Here's the thing: these people aren't interested in anything other than their own political power. They didn't launch this massive, secret program of spying on Americans in order to serve the public good or defend the nation - they did it for their own power and the financial gain of their backers.
Given their utter lack of restraint, their total certainty that they are ordained by God to take whatever they want whenever they want it - trampling the law, public opinion, the truth, and anything else that gets in their way - can anyone honestly believe that these people didn't make use of that surveillance for their own ends? Spy on their political rivals, perhaps? It's a virtual certainty!
These people have made the Nixon Administration look like a troop of boy scouts, so it's a sure thing that they've taken the Watergate model and exceeded it a thousand fold. If/when some instance of that political or corporate abuse of their illegally-seized surveillance power comes to light, things should break wide open - I hope.
