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Democrats: Gullible, Corrupt, or Blackmailed?
I favor the last of these possibilities.
In Glenn Greenwald's article on the NSA phone-sex snooping, he quotes the following exchange, set off with (what else?) a typically implausible lie from GWB:
ROSS: Kinne says she listened to hundreds of Americans simply calling their families …
KINNE: Personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything having anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that nobody else should have been listening to.
ROSS: President Bush has reassured Americans again and again:
GEORGE BUSH: It’s phone calls of known Al Qaeda suspects making a phone call into the United States.
KINNE: I would say that that is completely a lie — I would call it a lie — because we were definitely listening to Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism…
ROSS: Kinne says she intercepted, recorded, and transcribed conversations with the military, journalists, and Red Cross and aid workers.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/09/eavesdropping/index.html
Now the point is that no one ever believed that particular lie of Bush's. And yet Democrats capitulated. They pretended they thought he was telling the truth, and voted to immunize telecoms that broke they law, they sanctioned these abuses.
I truly feel sorry for them.
Comments (3)
Oh well, Bush lying, breaking the law- even in that mockery of Yoo-ism that is the shell of FISA the actions described are illegal-
Doesn't matter. Besides, we've moved on to a new set of crises.
The fact that we have a lawbreaker that nobody can trust as President is just a coincidence, a historical curiousity.
I shouldn't care. And it's good for the Democrats to allow Bush to trash the nation.
October 9, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's, um, curiosity. No second u needed.
I myself have no idea why some Dems, including Barack, caved in on the FISA bill. Something made a number of them change their minds, but I'm sure it's not because they got their jollies listening in on pillowtalk between members of the military and their loved ones back home.
But, I rec'd your post anyway, because I, too, was shocked at the news today about the way this whole thing has been treated by those who actually listened in. I'm proud of the whistleblowers.
Peace,
Lis
October 9, 2008 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am very proud of the whistleblowers too. With all the talk of how vindictive this Government is towards whistleblowers (and a look at Palin's record shows that if anything vindictiveness will increase if Palin/McCain wins) it truly takes
courage to step forward and speak the truth.
I find curiosity a 'curious' word, and the spelling in this sentence is probably the first time I've gotten it right.
I would never suggest that Barack and other Dems desired to listen in to pillow talk. If anything, I'm suggesting that enough dirt was compliled on Dems themselves to make their opposition to Bush's desires impossible (perhaps the fruits of the earlier surveillance, that was given amnesty during the FISA gutting: remember the Watergate 'plumbers' were engaged in illegal surveillance of the DNC).
And I truly am peplexed and upset. Jay Rockefeller, whom Greenwald derides as 'Sen. Claude Rains, D-WV,' seems like a decent man, and qualified enough, at least on paper, to head the Senate Intelligence Committee. His Phase II report on the mishandling of Iraqi intelligence is a worthwhile document, compiled against strong Republican opposition. But as Greenwald says, it is absurd for him to be indignant about the misuse of legislation that contains no safeguards whatsoever. The FISA bill, as passed last year by Barack and co., invited this abuse- it virtually DEMANDED it.
And I am angry, too, about the way those who warned about this were shouted down. The electorate is going to have to wise up to the fact that NO politician can be trusted. That is why Congressional oversight is needed- that is why Ethics Committees should not have people like Porter Goss on them.
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/07/porter-goss-on.html
October 10, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
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