[Osx-nutters] Fwd: Rove Blasts Warrantless Wiretapping Decision

[Kevin Callahan]

Begin forwarded message:



 >White House Blood Libel by Chris Floyd
 >
 >             White House Blood Libel
 >             by Chris Floyd
 >             by Chris Floyd
 >
 >             From CNN/AP: Rove Blasts Warrantless Wiretapping  
Decision.
 >
 >               TOLEDO, Ohio - Presidential adviser Karl Rove  
criticized a
 >federal judge's order for an immediate end to the government's  
warrantless
 >surveillance program, saying Wednesday such a program might have  
prevented
 >the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Rove said the government should be  
free to
 >listen if al Qaeda is calling someone within the U.S. "Imagine if  
we could
 >have done that before 9/11. It might have been a different  
outcome," he
 >said.
 >
 >             It's time to be done with the dangerous fiction that  
this kind
 >of thing is just "hardball politics" - or indeed, politics of any  
kind, as
 >the term is normally understood in a democracy. What Rove is giving  
voice
 >to here is nothing less than the new blood libel of our age: that  
those who
 >oppose the Bush Administration's unconstitutional actions are  
opening the
 >door to a new 9/11. The implication is clear: anyone who speaks up  
for the
 >Constitution is working for the death of innocent Americans. They  
are, by
 >definition, traitors. Thus they deserve what traitors get: death.
 >
 >             Rove is being only slightly less circumspect than the
 >innumerable Bushist sycophants and bootlickers yapping in the echo  
chamber
 >of the right-wing media, who say openly that pro-Constitution  
citizens are
 >actively yearning for another 9/11; they want the terrorists "to  
win;" they
 >want more Americans to die. Every day this drumbeat grows louder:  
traitors
 >are among us, terrorist-lovers are among us, they're going to get us
 >killed, we must stop them - at all costs.
 >
 >             Karl Rove knows full well that the words he spoke in  
Toledo
 >were a lie. He know that the government had the power and the
 >Constitutional right "to listen if al Qaeda [was] calling someone  
in the
 >U.S." before 9/11, just as it does now, through the very FISA  
secret court
 >system that Bush's warrantless surveillance openly circumvents.  
Rove knows
 >that the FISA judges require only the barest hint of possible  
terrorist
 >connections (or perhaps none at all, as far as we know) to  
authorize such
 >wiretaps, which they had done without a single demur thousands of  
times
 >before 9/11. What's more, Rove knows that the government could  
initiate
 >such wiretaps instantly, without any warrant whatsoever, and keep them
 >running for 72 hours before seeking retroactive approval from the
 >ever-compliant FISA court.
 >
 >             Rove knows there is not a single imaginable  
circumstance in
 >which the interception of communications involving the alleged 9/11
 >hijackers would have been blocked by the Congressionally-mandated,
 >Constitutional FISA system in place before the attacks. There is no
 >imaginable circumstance in which the communications of even remotely
 >suspected terrorists would be blocked by FISA today. Thus Bush's
 >warrantless surveillance program is completely unnecessary for  
"listening
 >in if al Qaeda is calling someone in the U.S.," or for the  
monitoring of
 >any other remotely possible terrorist threat.
 >
 >             From this reality, we can draw only one conclusion: the
 >warrantless surveillance program is being used for something other  
than
 >monitoring the communications of terrorist suspects and those  
connected to
 >them. This is doubly confirmed by the fact that over the past few  
years,
 >Congress has repeatedly asked the Bush Administration if it needed  
even
 >stronger surveillance powers than the frankly draconian FISA court  
already
 >gave them. No, no, said Bush's minions; what we have is good enough.
 >
 >             Good enough to monitor terrorist threats, yes; but  
clearly not
 >sweeping enough for whatever it is the Bush Administration is actually
 >doing with its warrantless surveillance program.
 >
 >             And what are they really doing? Karl Rove knows, of  
course -
 >but we don't. One key aspect of the program is certain, however:  
whether
 >it's being used against terrorist suspects, or political opponents, or
 >competitors of the Bush Faction's corporate cronies, the main  
purpose of
 >the program is to establish the principle that the "unitary executive"
 >cannot be bound by any law. It is yet another step in the careful,  
fully
 >conscious construction of a presidential dictatorship, a new kind  
of state
 >to replace the old Constitutional Republic that Bush and his fellow
 >elitists find so inconvenient to their pursuit of wealth, dominion and
 >ideological fantasy.
 >
 >             So here is where we are. The president's chief adviser is
 >deliberately telling lies about the Administration's clearly criminal
 >peeping-tom program, lies deliberately constructed to sow fear  
among the
 >American people - and murderous hatred for those who oppose  
presidential
 >dictatorship.
 >
 >             This isn't politics. This isn't partisanship. This is  
blood
 >libel, and it will end in blood - sooner, not later.
 >
 >             August 26, 2006
 >
 >             Chris Floyd [send him mail] is the author of Empire  
Burlesque:
 >The Secret History of the Bush Regime.
 >
 >             Copyright © 2006 Chris Floyd
 >
 >             Chris Floyd Archives

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