This Is Wire Tap
This shouldn't come as a big surprise to anybody who pays attention, but George W. Bush has done a monumental flip-flop on the issue of wiretaps requiring a court order.
I think, once again, opinion on this will divide along the lines of who trusts this president and his intentions, and who doesn't. For those who believe in him and his cause, no transgression of the law can be too great if it means achieving the ends that the White House propagandists spell out post facto. For those of us who are non-believers in the Almighty Bush, even the tiniest of improprieties is seen as another symptom of the virus that has infected the highest seat of power in the world. The evidence above says that Bush flat-out lied. Not about blowjobs, but about the power to circumvent the courts to monitor his citizens. This smells more of Nixon than of Clinton.
There is a certain arrogance that comes with power. It's everywhere. We know about it in Canada all too well, with the Liberal Party's "culture of entitlement" after lo these many decades in power. Patronage, cronyism, corruption, abuse of power - that seems to be par for the course. But the Bush White House has brought a new twist. Instead of denying wrongdoing, they put out campaigns to justify it in the name of 9/11. The PNAC crowd got their Pearl Harbor, and are milking it for everything it's worth and more. I'm not saying anything new here, but whenever something else comes up that brings the point home, it needs to be mentioned.
"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order," he said on April 20, 2004 in Buffalo, New York.Apparently, he was against breaking the law before he was for it.
"Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," he added.
I think, once again, opinion on this will divide along the lines of who trusts this president and his intentions, and who doesn't. For those who believe in him and his cause, no transgression of the law can be too great if it means achieving the ends that the White House propagandists spell out post facto. For those of us who are non-believers in the Almighty Bush, even the tiniest of improprieties is seen as another symptom of the virus that has infected the highest seat of power in the world. The evidence above says that Bush flat-out lied. Not about blowjobs, but about the power to circumvent the courts to monitor his citizens. This smells more of Nixon than of Clinton.
There is a certain arrogance that comes with power. It's everywhere. We know about it in Canada all too well, with the Liberal Party's "culture of entitlement" after lo these many decades in power. Patronage, cronyism, corruption, abuse of power - that seems to be par for the course. But the Bush White House has brought a new twist. Instead of denying wrongdoing, they put out campaigns to justify it in the name of 9/11. The PNAC crowd got their Pearl Harbor, and are milking it for everything it's worth and more. I'm not saying anything new here, but whenever something else comes up that brings the point home, it needs to be mentioned.
posted by Jaymeister at 12/20/2005 11:57:00 p.m.
2 Comments:
I have to read up more on Clinton and Carter's tactics to see if there's an apples-to-apples comparison. If they violated the law, then they should have been held accountable too. I don't give anybody a pass on that - God knows I have many issues with Clinton.
That said, why was it necessary for Bush to go out of his way to repeat his assertion that court orders are required for wiretaps, even for investigating terrorists, period, when this wasn't the case at all?
I guess the arguement could be made that the wiretaps are only effective if they are kept secret. I can buy that arguement.
This is one of those gray area, slippery slope scenarios we all dreaded when being assigned grade 12 essays, but the more I think about it and the circumstances I can get behind it.
Why did he lie? To avoid arousing suspicion to the programme for the reasons I stated above? Perhaps. We'll know in about 100 years when all of the papers are released.
I saw a US survey saying that 68% of Americans polled agreed with the wiretaps...we have a mutual "love" for polls however, so read into that what you will.
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