Were you shocked to find out our government wasn’t telling us the whole truth about its secret spying? Well, otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret, right? Remember when President Bush told us his National Security Agency (NSA) was only monitoring international calls involving suspected terrorists? It turns out that wasn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
It took the media to compel Bush to admit the NSA is also collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans, like you and me.
The media, in this case, weren’t even those liberal co-conspirators who brought down the last Republican president – Woodward and Bernstein at The Washington Post and its other evil liberal twin The New York Times. This was USA Today for goodness sake! USA Today is about as controversial as your mother’s apple pie. When it starts uncovering dirt on the presidential administration, you better start shoveling dirt on the Bushies. The end game must be near. Call Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Is it true the implosion of the Republican Party is the first sign in the Book of Revelations? This is, as the song goes, "the end of the world as we know it."
Showing the administration’s incompetence borders on genius – the story broke just as Bush’s latest nominee-in-trouble was being led blindfolded into the congressional hearings. The next director of the CIA might have a shorter tenure than Porter Goss. He even has a shot at being the next Harriet Miers. (Whatever happened to Harriet, anyway?)
It’s not like the senators needed more ammunition to sink Gen. Michael V. Hayden. Not that the general isn’t a good person; he’s just the quintessential Bush nominee – the wrong guy at the wrong time. With the CIA, a civilian agency, in total disarray and its morale at rock bottom, Bush plans a military takeover. Forget about the fact the agency has to be under civilian control. This is after he appointed Goss to root out the leakers and other disloyal elements in a CIA that couldn’t be trusted to go along with the administration’s Iraq misadventure. This is after Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney mistrusted the CIA so much they formed their own mini-spy agency within the White House. Then, after it went wrong, after the Bushies ignored the evidence that didn’t suit their pre-conceived strategy of invading Iraq, they turned around and blamed the CIA for mission failure. Pity the poor general who has to clean up this mess. Pity the poor nation depending on the CIA to tell them whether Iran has nuclear weapons.
But, let’s go back to the phone records of millions of Americans. The real hero of the moment is Qwest, the little Denver company that stood up to the Emperor and said, hey, you’re not wearing any clothes. Qwest told the NSA to go stick it when asked for the records of their customers. Sorry, it’s illegal. Not that Qwest is run by Mother Teresa. It isn’t. The company has been charged with criminal and ethical violations. Maybe it takes one to know one. Whatever. But while AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth caved in to the government’s demands, at least somebody was there to say wait a minute.
I’m trying to figure out how the NSA has time for anything else once they comb the phone records of calls made between my wife and her sorority. The process, called "social network analysis," is normally used by companies trying to sell stuff. As I understand it, this kind of analysis can figure out links between people where no apparent link exists. For example, if you and the terrorists are ordering your ground meat from the same butcher, you could become a "person of interest." In other words you could be on your way to Guantanamo without a trial. Far-fetched you say? The NSA spy program has been conducted without oversight, without regard to the laws of the nation, by a president who habitually acts before he thinks – if he ever thinks.
All of this is happening as the new White House press secretary, Tony Snow, has launched a counterattack on the "biased" news media. Snow has been hard at work blasting The Washington Post and The New York Times, and now even USA Today, for distorting the truth. Snow recognizes bias when he sees it, after all, he did work for Fox News. Remember, this is an administration that fudged facts on the budget deficit, the Medicare Drug Bill and, most of all, the war in Iraq.
But apparently in Washington, the Bushies are supposed to be the ones with a monopoly on lying.
