| I waited several days
before writing this because I wanted to see how things played out. I
wasn't surprised.I did my research and I can come to only one conclusion.
That this article was written with the sole intent on acheiving two goals.
1) to draw the attention away from the great news from Iraq and thus
preventing the President from taking a well deserved victory lap and
2)assuring a fillabuster on the Patriot act. Well it has worked and it
worked with one of the most slanderous and false articles in a long
time. Let start with the Title. Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say Lies? yes. Lets break down the article. "Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight." Not so secret... "According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said." Rockafeller knew? Not so secret... "The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues." So A judge was notified and congress was briefed. Not so secret... "After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said." Sounds to me like I may be the only person in America who didn't know this was happening. Not a secret... Actually it appears that I am not the only one who knew of this. Nazi Pelosi knew as well. Not only did she know but she signed off on it. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/125959.shtml Dirty Harry Ried knew as well. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/110626.shtml If the NYT spent a year researching this you would have thought they would have picked up on this. Then again maybe they did and decided it was not important "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted." How civil minded of Them. The Administration wanted them to hold off on publishing the story. But they were fine with them printing it on the week of the elections in Iraq where Bush could pick up some needed popularity points? Something doesn't make sense here. What exactly was being done? "Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan." Isn't that a good thing? The article goes on and on about warrantless evesdropping but in one sentence reveals the truth. That only suspected terrorists were targeted. And since when do we worry about the civil liberties of suspected terrorists? 'Widespread abuses including eavesdropping on Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists by American intelligence agencies" That's a nice sucker Punch. That program was halted thirty years ago before Bush took office and this one was created in 2002 and as the article stated only targeted suspected terrorists... What about civil liberties? "Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal" "A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses." We are desperately close to losing the Patriot Act alltogether and the NYT pulls this stunt? As far as I can tell after three years there have been no reports of Abuses by the NYT. Why are they crying foul? "Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens." President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said. So the Bush Administration has not asked to nor secretly targeted Americans talking to Americans in the US. Only Americans Talking to suspected terroroists outside the US...Where's the problem? Here is the problem. now that terrorists know we are secretly eavesdropping on them They can buy a mobile phone and a prepaid calling card and talk without fear of being found out. The NYT has put us all in great jepardy once again.. And one more thing. They failed to mention that the writer of the article has a book comming out on this very topic in less than one week.He submitted the book three months ago and they wait until now to print? -BERT |