As much as I would have liked to have viewed President Bush’s NSA spying program as extraordinary compared to what other presidents have done, I wasn’t convinced until I read this article. The ACLU is suing the National Security Agency to halt the program, and one of the plaintiffs jumped out at me.
Journalist James Bamford, a plaintiff and author of “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s Most Secret Agency,” said that “the spying program removes a necessary firewall that would prevent the kind of government abuse seen during the Watergate scandal.”
James Bamford knows more about the NSA than any civilian on the planet. I’ve read another of his books about the agency (Body of Secrets), and it is the most detailed account of its kind I’ve ever read. If he says Bush’s spying is beyond the pale of what is acceptable, I believe him.
Wow, James Bamford is on that suit?
Bush is fucked. Seriously.
When an insider like Bamford (who was given total access to Cryto City at Ft. Meade for “Body of Secrets”) is signed on against you, you’re circling the drain.
Y’know, I thought that Bush’s tactic of pushing the blame for the idiocy of the Iraq war onto the CIA was going to be his undoing (you just don’t get far in government pissing on the CIA), but one wonders whether pissing on the NSA might actually be the final nail in his coffin. Considering the NSA’s consideration for its public image (something the CIA has never worried about), I’d venture to guess that there’s a few people involved in this that would like to see this attention being paid to them to just go away.
I’ll believe it when I see it, but “pissing on the NSA” sure isn’t the brightest thing in the world to do. Funny that this NYTimes report containing data from the agency came out the same day as the ACLU lawsuit. Here’s the choice passage:
So, the director of the FBI is on record doubting the legality of the program from its inception, and the program doesn’t (and never has) actually worked at catching terrahists.
It’s likely to be illegal, but prosecutors need more than that to convince a Republican Congress to impeach this guy. Lots of presidents (probably all of them) have broken the law at some point. For there to be an impeachment, some sort of nefarious pattern would have to be provable among the people NSA spied on. If the spying really was random and based on keywords, it’s not quite as bad as if (as speculated at AmeriBlog, but not proven) journalists and/or political opponents were being spied on. The question of motive is the difference between “failed experimental program” and “gross abuse of power.”
Given a pattern like that (which, again, has yet to be proven), he would be fucked I think. There are no more electoral coattails to ride, and with all the corruption scandals, what better way to illustrate a willingness to clean house than to go after the kingpin, Five Families-at-the-end-of-Godfather-I style?
In the beginning, I decided to join the campaign to impeach your “smirking chimp”, my “dum’ass botch”. As evidence for that, you’ll soon be invited to click on a hyperlink.
Before doing so, however, I would like you to read through the rest of this text. In case, you’d like to know, the hyperlink for your blog, specifically, “Radical Georgia Moderate”, is found at the third hyperlink on the list below … ah, please remember, no clicking until AFTER reading the entire text.
Perusing your blog, I believe I arrived at what is a reasonable inference. That is, both you and your readers would welcome news that indicates the campaign to impeach the president is increasing in both vigor and breadth. Ah, you’ll find that evidence by clicking on the second enclosed hyperlink.
As for my game plan for capturing Osama, you’ll find it by clicking on the first listed hyperlink, which immediately follows this colon:
http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/01/osama-and-our-president-dumass-botch_20.html
http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/01/danger-senator-specter-danger.html
http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/states-writes.htm#GA
toodles
……\
.he who is known as sefton
oh, yes, surely, you’ve heard about the government “requesting” certain records about internet activity. oh, br’dah! … cynical and skeptical lil’ole me, I’m smelling a rat in all that. Quite candidly, I have cause to suspect that more than compiling statistics on access to pornographic websites is involved.
oh, yeah, right after Hitler came to power, the German people were assured that, if they were innocent of untoward activity, they would have nothing to worry about … yeah, right.