The ABCs Of Political Diversion

The NY Post scores again with another "War on terror > Democracy" editorial rant.

ANTI-TERROR ABCS

There are several lies in this column I'd like to smack down-

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter — a Republican — joined knee-jerk Bush-bashers like Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy in their unwillingness to understand or to accept that America is in a global war on terrorism.

No one in Congress doubts the seriousness of the terror threats. That is why they authorized military force in Afghanistan so the President could capture Osama bin Laden (how's that going, by the way?) and unroot his terrorist network (only a few hundred more Al Qeada #2s to go!). I'm an extremely liberal person and I proudly had one of those newspaper cutout 'Osama: Dead Or Alive' wanted posters up after the attacks. And, unlike the President, I never stated that bin Laden was not of concern. Congress also has given the President broader legal abilities by statute (including making it easier to use FISA in wartime)... abilities he illegally surpassed in secret. The committment in Congress is strong. If the President insists on questioning that, then Congress should question the committment of the President who has undermined our global efforts by invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, stretched the military thinner than an Olsen twin, turned his back on former allies, and destroyed our reputation around the world through the use of torture and other immoral tactics. So let's not go tit-for-tat here. To suggest that a Congress trying to uphold the laws of our land is soft on terrorism is a (to use a cliche term) fascist tactic.
Next.

Not surprisingly, some Democrats deliberately tried to mislead the public. Leahy, for one, compared the Bush program to the 1960s-era wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. — a gross distortion on several levels.

The Democrats were actually the ones who got the main issue across better- the faulty legal basis for the program and the question of presidential power in wartime. It was the Attorney General who presented a false argument, using the Rove-ian argument that to support the war on terror means supporting this program. Regarding the issue with comparisons to the monitoring of King and others... how does the Post know that's not what's happening? No one knows. That's the issue. They have been spying without warrants or any oversight, so they could be spying on anyone for all we know. It's the 'trust us' argument from a White House with little credibility. The spying on King and others occurred in an age with little to no limits on presidential power; the issue is that the White House is recreating that atmosphere.

Next lie-

Indeed, said Gonzales, "The program provides the United States with the early-warning system we so desperately needed on Sept. 10 . . . We cannot forget that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in our country, living in our communities."

As the 9/11 Commission concluded, the problem wasn't having enough dots- it was connecting them. For instance, the government did have an early warning on September 10... On that date, the NSA intercepted Al Qeada calls between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. One said "The match begins tomorrow". A second intercept said "Tomorrow is zero hour". The calls were made in Arabic and were not translated until the day after the attack. Had the government acted more quickly on information they had, perhaps proper security measures could've been put in place. Perhaps not. Still, the point remains that the government was quite capable, within the law, of preventing the attacks, had they just connected the dots in time.

And there's the 'unprecedented' card again-

President Bush and his administration are doing their jobs, against an enemy unlike any with which previous presidents have had to contend.

Cold War. Cuban missile crisis. Nuclear bomb shelters. Duck and cover. Mutually assured destruction. Any of these ring a bell?

Finally-

As Gonzales rightly noted, "it is hard to imagine a president who would not elect to use these tools in defense of the American people — in fact, it would be irresponsible to do otherwise."

President Bush already had the tools needed to defend the American people and do so without violating the FISA law (or authorize illegal torture to use another example). He choose to do otherwise and has impaired the ability to legally prosecute any terrorist suspects we may capture (see: Padilla, Jose). How irresponsible of him.

You'll notice the Post ignored the issues of legality with the program, which is, ya know, the whole point of all this...

For better takes on the hearings, go see- Sen. Feingold's strongly worded summary (WHAT WE HEARD FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL) as well as Howard Kurtz's take in the Washington Post on the media's half-assed coverage of this important event (Eavesdropping on Congress).