A Threat To Us All
Writing in the Pasadena Star-News, Mort Kondracke has an op-ed piece that hits the nail on the head (and is in line with what I have been saying all along). This irrational, hate-driven drive to get Bush, no matter what the cost, is going to cost all of us plenty in the long run.
ENOUGH already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now it's threatening our national survival.
I do not exaggerate. Bush-hatred has reached such intensity that CIA officers and other bureaucrats are leaking major secrets about anti-terrorism policy and communications intelligence that undermine our ability to fight Islamic extremism.
Would newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed the fact that the United States had broken German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure its communications? Or revealed how and where Nazi spies were being interrogated? Nowadays, newspapers win Pulitzer Prizes for such disclosures. In Congress and in much of the media, the immediate reaction to news that the National Security Agency was intercepting international terrorist communications was not to say, "Good work - and how can we help?" Rather, it was to scream about a "domestic spying" scandal, as though Richard Nixon were back in the White House and tapping the telephone of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.
And the reaction has been much the same to USA Today's story last week that the NSA "has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans" in a program that "reaches into the homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, reacted by asserting that "these are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything but we're just going to collect their phone information for the heck of it. Where does it stop?"
Similarly, Newsweek's cover this week blares "Spying On Your Calls" - no question mark used - and implies that the Bush White House could be tapping everyone's telephones. In fact, what seems to be happening, though the details are secret, is that most long-distance phone companies have given the NSA their billing records identifying what numbers are calling what other numbers, when and for how long. Names are not included. And the NSA - not for the heck of it but to protect us from attack - is using the records to track terrorist networks and calling patterns. If a known terrorist in Pakistan calls a number in Los Angeles, I want the government to know what number that person calls. Don't you?
Certainly, the government will find out the names of people in a terrorist calling chain. If it wants to tap a domestic phone, it needs a warrant, and unless officials are lying through their teeth, it is asking for them.
It goes on from there. He's right.
By Truzenzuzex, Tuesday, 23 May , 2006 @ 6:54 pm
My question is, when will BDS become officially recognized by the AMA?
Heh. Probably not until after another terrorist attack on our homeland.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 23 May , 2006 @ 7:06 pm
I think it needs APA recognition!