January 30, 2006

SPIES, LIES, AND WIRETAPS

NY TIMES EDITORIAL 1/29

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking.


WHOLE ARTICLE: NYTIMES

2 Comments:

Blogger Jonathan said...

Our current President swept (sort of) into power on this idea that he would be very different from his predecessor. He'd be open, honest, transparent, above-board, etc. I was reading Jonathan Alter this morning and saw the following...

No reporter managed to ask the president about his statement of April 24, 2004, when Bush told a Buffalo audience: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. 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." This statement was false, and Bush knew it when he said it. The president lied in Buffalo, just as surely as Bill Clinton lied when he said: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Of course, Bush's Buffalo lie got a tiny fraction of the airplay of Clinton's Lewinsky lie.

Didn't all those conservatives in Congress try to impeach President Clinton for lying about Monica's head-bob incident? Hmmmmm...

j.

12:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

|国际翻译家和中国翻译深圳翻译公司|联合主办,主题为“翻译与多元文化”。这将是国际翻译同声传译在亚洲举行的第一次盛会,是促进亚洲翻译界与国际翻译界交流与合作的大好时机。
广州翻译公司今年广交会不允许外商自带翻译入场,但还是有很多翻译公司|已有生意合作意向的外商,在全国翻译公司中找外语导游当翻译,进行“场外商贸洽谈”。
同声传译现在上海翻译公司英语、日语、法语等大语种导游储备充足,深圳翻译公司|也是随着参加广交会的巴西、西班牙等西班牙语系以及阿拉伯语国家的客商提供深圳翻译大幅增多,小语种导游产生巨大缺口,其中来自巴西的外商比翻译公司

9:19 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Blog Home