The AP h has a story, following up on a New York Times story that George Bush has directed the National Security Agency to spy on citizens domestically.
The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.
During the reviews, government officials have also provided a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat, showing that there is a catastrophic risk to the country or government, the official said.
We’ve heard about catastrophic risks to the country before. If you recall, Iraq was said to pose such a risk. Buying yellowcake from Niger to make nuclear weapons as President Bush said in his State of the Union address. But then, once it became utterly clear that Iraq was nothing more than a toothless dictatorship that posed no threat to us, suddenly we weren’t invading because of the threat — no, no, suddenly we were purveyors of democracy; helping the people of Iraq out of the goodness of our hearts at a cost of half a billion dollars, 2,000 American soldiers’ lives, 30,000 Iraqi lives (at least), and counting. You’ll also recall the ongoing effort by the Bush administration to conflate Iraq with terrorism. I bring this up as a reminder that we can’t trust George Bush or his administration to be straight with us about whether a threat actually exists or not. So, where I might at least pause a second to consider whether a trustworthy President could legitimately authorize domestic spying, there is simply no basis for giving Bush the benefit of the doubt.
We can now add NSA spying on U.S. citizens to our list of anti-democratic practices such as torture; incarcerating people without charges or access to courts and a lawyer; and incarcerating people without providing anybody any notice that they’ve been captured. It’s as if they’re determined to burn down our democratic village to save it.
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