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Nature of the Beast

Friday, Aug. 18, 2006 12:48 PM


As expected, the Justice Department has appealed the ruling by Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to put an immediate halt to the warrantless wiretap program authorized by President Bush and run by the NSA.

It is also no surprise that Mr. Bush continues to insist that he has the right to do so, and that ignoring the Constitution is within his authority under the AUMF and the Constitution itself.

Uh-huh. Our Founding Fathers wrote a document to set a different course from the tyrannical dictates of King George III, and wrote it so that George W. Bush could flaunt it at will.

I don't think so.

But Bush's comments slams those who disagree with the nature or necessity of the program.

"I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live," Bush pointed out, adding the simplistic defense, "And if al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know why they're calling."

Excuse me, Sir. I'm not the one who has presided over failed efforts to instill democracy in Afghanistan (Karzai is thinking about calling it quits, and the court system follows Sharia); I'm not the clown who let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora; I'm not the moron who broke off chasing bin Laden to dick around with a tinpot dictator who had no WMD's; nor am I the guy who predicted it'd all be over in a couple of months, it's just untidiness, or that there's no civil war because it doesn't look like our civil war. That doesn't even touch upon speculation that the Iraqi government may evolve into something other than a democracy (like a Shi'ite theocracy).

I'm not the assclown who ignored warnings from experts and previous administration officials about al Qaeda. (In fact, after your performance in the China spy plane incident, my estimation was that we'd have a major domestic terrorist incident within six months, and be at war within a year � solely because I thought you were a spoiled little boy wearing a three-piece suit. Turns out I was only off by a few months on the first part, whereas you were busy jacking off about Saddam.)

And I'm also not the world leader who stayed on vacation when major events were breaking, whether it was um ... uh ... that um ... ah ... really big storm Hurricane Katrina, or plots by extremist folks terrorists, or one-week month-long wars against terrorists that we allowed to happen through our inaction.

As for al Qaeda calling into the United States, I'll say it again: why the hell are we playing a game with a one-trick defense? I want to know what happens if we miss the all-important phone call. What is the government, under your leadership, doing to secure our ports, and why is it so fixated on 9/11 and planes? (If you don't think something like TATP could make a mess out of a shopping mall, you haven't been reading your briefing documents � it's been used by suicide bombers.)

It is still unconstitutional and illegal to enact a wiretap without a warrant.

And I certainly don't want national security based on ad hoc ergo propter hoc.



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