This will crucify Bush---Gore has got to drive this point home today..

[Justice Is Comin]

God I am desperately hoping Al has been briefed on this. It is the coup de grace to nail Bush on the NSA.

He is claiming his "executive perogative" is essential because of nine eleven. Every criminal denies they did the crime until that one final piece of evidence that makes it hopeless to lie anymore. This puts Bush's DNA all over the crime to the exclusion of any other explanation.

The NSA advised Bush they were enjoying their perverted program on Americans BEFORE 9-11---BEFORE 9-11---BEFORE 9-11. He can't comport that statement with what he used for justification no matter what the fuck he does. Let alone the fact that it's constitutionally illegal no matter when Americans are spied on without a warrant, his already on record feeble attempt to find cover is annihilated by this fact.

There was no 9-11 before September 11th. And the IWR wasn't even a gleam in his eye until after 9-11. So Bush how do you explain no warrant wiretaps that you had to initiate because of the war on terror when there was no war on terror until AFTER SEPTEMBER 11TH?

So crucify him today with this Al. Put the rope around his neck. I'll be out looking for a tree.


<clip>

Friday 13 January 2006


The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

......Still, one thing that appears to be indisputable is that the NSA surveillance began well before 9/11 and months before President Bush claims Congress gave him the power to use military force against terrorist threats, which Bush says is why he believed he had the legal right to bypass the judicial process.

According to the online magazine Slate, an unnamed official in the telecom industry said NSA's "efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a 'data-mining' operation, which might eventually cull 'millions' of individual calls and e-mails."


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf

[bigscott]

1. looking at this another way

EVEN with wiretaps and spying and all the rest - this group was too stupid/lazy/derelict to stop 9-11. Oh right - they did not WANT to stop 911

[KoKo]

2. Leopold might not have nailed this story down. See this posting on Kos

by Emptywheel showing that Jason Leopold's piece on this might lead to the wrong conclusion, before we start pushing for folks to jump on it:


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/14/141253/617

[robbedvoter]

3. Whether he CLEARLY violated FISA or not , WHY DO IT?

And with all his doing it, he still didn't prevent 911 - so, what's the rationale? And, obviously, it wasn't 911 that changed everything, it was W! This is to me the significant info here:


    James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

    "The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions," Risen wrote in the book. "Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders" and "the most ambitious got the message."

So, it wasn't "Clinton did it too" and again: WHY????