Bush Spied On Me
Looking for a last minute gift? AMERICAblog has a few new shirts for sale.
From the NY Times:
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."
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.
posted by storiesinamerica @ 3:56 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Wow. Check this out...
Bush Apologizes for Phone Taps After 9/11
by Scott Ott
(2005-12-16) — President George Bush today apologized to the American people for signing an order in 2002 that allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to secretly listen in on international phone calls in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The New York Times today broke the story that after 9/11 the NSA tapped phonelines of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Americans without court orders in an effort to trace communication networks discovered on computers and cellphones confiscated from terror suspects.
“I want to apologize for allowing the NSA to do these wiretaps after 9/11,” the president said. “I’m sorry that I violated the privacy of some of these folks after terrorists launched attacks from our soil that killed 3,000 people, destroyed two skyscrapers and four jumbo jets, and punched a gaping hole in our military headquarters.”
“My biggest regret,” the president added, “is that the NSA didn’t secretly tap these lines before 9/11. I hope my fellow Americans can forgive me.”
Sadly, the murderers of 3,000 people never got fitted for these t-shirts.
Good story here about al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris who was nabbed by the NSA's "special collection program."
Scroll down till you see his not-so-happy face:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004090.htm
Yeah, it is sad. It's also sad that Bush used and continues to use 9/11 as a justification for bombing Iraq.
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks."
President Bush
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm
I’ll tell you what makes me sad…...Liberals who are so conservative they don’t want anything to change – not Saddam’s repression, not the dying Social Security program, not anything.
Oh, they will fight for one liberal cause, the right to abortion. But that right hasn't been threatened for 20 years.
Liberals today are so conservative they don’t dare consider a new liberal idea that might help the helpless or free the world. They’re not liberal, they’re just Democrats frozen in 1985 (at best). The question always is, How can we do this the old way?
Pat Buchanan is now the most articulate apologist for the anti-war left. Now how sad is THAT. I can understand why the ultra-right-wing would oppose the toppling of Saddam’s fascist regime, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why the frick that would piss off liberals so much.
Quoting Christopher Hitchens:
“If you examine the record of the so-called anti-war movement in this country and imagine what would have happened had its counsel been listened to over the last 15 and more years, you would have a world in which the following would be the case: Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait, he would have succeeded in the annexation, not merely the invasion, but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state that was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations. And with these resources as we now know because he lost that war, he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying arsenal that was possible for him to lay his hands on. That's one consequence of anti-war politics, that's what would have happened.
In the meanwhile, Slobodan Milosevic would have made Bosnia part of a greater Serbia, and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and also annexed. The Taliban would be still in power in Afghanistan if the anti-war movement had been listened to, and al-Qaeda would still be their guests. And Saddam Hussein, with his crime family, would still be privately holding ownership over a terrorized people in a state that's been most aptly described as a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave underneath it.”
And for the sake of brevity I won’t even get into the business of the capitulation of Colonel Gaddafi or the envoys of Saddam that were negotiating to buy North Korean missiles in 2003.
I always considered myself a liberal, so perhaps you can understand my sadness these days -- now that liberals have become the new conservatives. Jeezus.
Plus, the Jacksonville Jaguars are probably going to kick the 49ers asses today.
Take care Rose...and sorry...I promise to kiss and make up soon.
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