Posthumous America: Spies, Lies and a Republic in Ruins

[dutchdemocrat]

Posthumous America: Spies, Lies and a Republic in Ruins

Good story in the NYT today about the pathetic ineffectiveness of Bush's illegal wiretap program in fighting terrorism – the ostensible reason offered for the scheme. But the story completely ignores what has rapidly become the most important aspect of this scandal (aside from its inherent – and impeachable – illegality): the fact that Bush ordered the illegal, warrantless, widespread wiretapping of American citizens MONTHS BEFORE the September 11 attacks, as the ever-intrepid Jason Leopold revealed last week: Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11.

Leopold's bombshell has yet to penetrate the cotton-packed ears of the mainstream media – even though it gives the lie to Bush's only "defense": the threadbare falsehood that Congress' Sept. 14th authorization for him to deal with the Sept. 11 attackers was a blank check "Enabling Act" allowing him to circumvent any law that might conflict with this mandate. As any sentient being knows, this argument is a great big crock of Crawford cowflop – so naturally, we will soon have long, detailed and utterly pointless Senate hearings into the matter, which will doubtless end with a Congressional surrender to the dictator's whim, albeit with a bit of harrumphing and tut-tutting to save face.

But Leopold has the "smoking gun" evidence that Bush's spy program had nothing at all to do with 9/11 – since it began days after Bush took office in January 2001. It also demolishes Dick Cheney's shameless – and shameful – propaganda ploy: claiming that the program "could have prevented the attacks on 9/11" if only it had been in place beforehand. Well, now we know, Dick: it was in place beforehand, and it didn't prevent the attacks on 9/11, did it?

What's more, Leopold reveals that Bush did not tell Congressional leaders about the program when it began: it was carried out, at his express order, without any judicial or legislative oversight whatsoever.

The evidence is irrefutable: Bush ordered and carried out a program of espionage against the citizens of the United States in defiance of the law, the Constitution, and the will of Congress. This is a high crime. This is, in fact, high treason. He should be impeached, indicted and brought to trial.

But you know and I know that this will never happen. The American Establishment – political, financial, journalistic – will, in the end, countenance this high crime, just as they have countenanced the horrific crimes of mass murder and international aggression in Iraq. Bush has called the Establishment's bluff – and whether this was an act of cool cunning by a high-riding tyrant or, as the estimable Steve Gilliard insists, a wild throw of desperation by a weak and stupid man, it doesn't really matter: it becomes more obvious every day that the Establishment has no stomach for a fight. The rot has gone too deep. The institutional elites will not stand up for the Republic; they have betrayed and abandoned it, content to hold on to their own pockets of power and privilege.

We are now a posthumous generation, living in the gutted, burned-out ruins of our ancestors' mansion. This is a new, unprecedented reality: a post-Revolutionary, post-democracy America. We're on our own now, "with no direction home;" we'll have to find some kind of different path, new ways of confronting and reshaping this dark reality. It would be much better, infinitely better, if it were not so; but it is so. "The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

Below are some excerpts from Leopold's sterling work:

SNIP


http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=417&Itemid=1

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And what did they get for all their data mining?

Nothing. Too much data. Too much time running down false leads. If they'd gone to the FISA court, a level headed judge might have warned them about that.....

[glitch]

2. they got plenty on their political opponents - which is all they care

about. I have no proof or links, just my opinion.

[ninkasi]

5. My opinion is the same...

I believe that the illegal wiretaps, in the beginning, were just to spy on political opponents, and groups of citizens who were opposed to Bush. The WTC attacks of 9-11 just gave them what they considered a plausible excuse to admit to their illegal acts. Illegal is the main word, though...what Bush did was, and is, against the law. He should be impeached and convicted.

This administration has been so obsessively secretive, it only stands to reason that they would want to know what secrets might have leaked out, in order to stop them. I put nothing past these bastards.

[leveymg]

3. If they had gone to the FISA court, 9/11 would never have happened.

If the CIA had simply handed off its surveillance operation of the "Brooklyn Cell" to the FBI as it was supposed to have done by law, and a FISA warrant had been obtained, then adequate coverage would have been maintained during the summer of 2001.

The problem is that Bush refused to roll up UBL cells -- FISA warrants would have guaranteed there would have been a record of that, so the Agency, the DIA, and the FBI proceeded as if Mr. Atta & Co. were never really here. We all know what the result of that was.

[Nikki Stone 1]

4. kicked and recommended

:kick: