Tristam: "Trifler, Fibber, Sophist, Spy"

[Inland]

http://www.counterpunch.org/tristam12202005.html

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In other words, President Bush on Sunday and Monday--like his many defenders in the punditocracy and the bloggosphere--has been relying on FISA to defend his warrantless domestic spying; relying, that is, on the very law created in order to counter exactly this sort of abuse back in the 1970s. It doesn't stop here. To further dig his grave while seemingly adding a brick or two to his schlepping on a hill, Bush used the McCain tactic: It's a new world out there, everything changed with "September the 11th," it is therefore necessary to stay ahead of the terrorists by getting ahead of some of the immediate constraints. He makes that argument in what was the most incoherent and self-defeating response of Monday's news conference, after he was asked "why, in the four years since 9/11, has your administration not sought to get changes in the law instead of bypassing it, as some of your critics have said?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that. First, I want to make clear to the people listening that this program is limited in nature to those that are known al Qaeda ties and/or affiliates. That's important. So it's a program that's limited, and you brought up something that I want to stress, and that is, is that these calls are not intercepted within the country. They are from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa. So in other words, this is not a--if you're calling from Houston to L.A., that call is not monitored.

Not exactly. The Standard Times in new Bedford, Mass., reported on Dec. 17 that agents of the Homeland Security Department showed up at a Dartmouth University Students' home to inquire about an inter-library loan request he'd made for Mao's Little Red Book. Two professors who reported the incident to the paper "said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a watch list,' and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further." If Homeland Security agents are devoting that much attention to an innocuous student's term paper, it is unlikely that the NSA, with its history of acting above the law, and President Bush, with his messianic sense of being the law, are limiting the surveillance's scope to foreigners. Bush concedes as much in his next sentence, when he slouches toward his incoherent self-defense on legal grounds and invokes the make-it-up-as-you-go edicts of Alberto Gonzales:

And if there was ever any need to monitor, there would be a process to do that. I think I've got the authority to move forward, Kelly. I mean, this is what--and the Attorney General was out briefing this morning about why it's legal to make the decisions I'm making. I can fully understand why members of Congress are expressing concerns about civil liberties. I know that. And it's--I share the same concerns. I want to make sure the American people understand, however, that we have an obligation to protect you, and we're doing that and, at the same time, protecting your civil liberties. Secondly, an open debate about law would say to the enemy, here is what we're going to do. And this is an enemy which adjusts. We monitor this program carefully. We have consulted with members of the Congress over a dozen times. We are constantly reviewing the program. Those of us who review the program have a duty to uphold the laws of the United States, and we take that duty very seriously.


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