Monday, December 19, 2005

White House press corps...sigh

Well someone asked the question that needed to be asked. Tellingly it was the last questions and perplexingly the reporter made it the first of a disjoint two-part question -- haven't you learned that if you don't ask simply worded short questions he's going to go way off into left field?!??!!!!

QUESTION: Mr. President, in making the case for domestic spying, could you tell us about planned attacks on the U.S. that were thwarted through your domestic spying plan? [Oh why couldn't you just stop here. Sigh...]

And also, on the issue of race, since you brought up the issue of Katrina, 2005 gave us your defense of yourself on race. And some are still not sold on that. In 2006, what are you giving to the nation on the issue of race, as we're looking to the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2007 and things of that nature?
Guess which question Bush "answered" first?

Here's the non-answer to the first part

QUESTION: Sir, the other...

BUSH: You asked a multiple-part question.

QUESTION: Yes, I did.

BUSH: Thank you for violating the multiple-part question rule.

QUESTION: I didn't know there was a law on that.

BUSH: There's not a law.

It's an executive order.

In this case, not monitored by the Congress.

Nor is there any administrative oversight.

QUESTION: Well, without breaking any laws, back on domestic spying. Making the case for that, can you give us some example...

BUSH: Oh, I got you. Yes, sorry.

No, I'm not going to talk about that, because it would help give the enemy notification and/or perhaps signal to them methods and uses and sources. And we're not going to do that.

It's really important for people to understand that the protection of sources and the protections of methods and how we use information to understand the nature of the enemy is secret.

And the reason it's secret is because, if it's not secret, the enemy knows about it, and if the enemy knows about it, it adjusts.

And, again, I want to repeat what I said about Osama bin Laden, the man who ordered the attack that killed 3,000 Americans.

We were listening to him. He was using a type of cell phone -- or a type of phone. And we put it in a newspaper -- somebody put it in the newspaper that this was the type of device he was using to communicate with his team. And he changed.

I don't know how I can make the point more clear that any time we give up -- and this is before they attacked us, by the way. Revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for simply says to the enemy: 'Change.'
Blah blah blah blah blah. This has little to do with sources and methods. This is the new equivalent of "Saddam was a bad guy" answer. The question can be answered without revealing sources and methods by simply saying "we've stopped x attacks using these wiretaps. We overheard y plots being made and these plots in z nonspecific countries were stopped." Could someone please give the White House press corps a brain for Christmas?

# posted 9:34 PM

Saturday, December 17, 2005

More nonsense

In today's live radio address, the president explains why the NSA needs to spy on us.

This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties.
As I said in the last post, it's time to stop letting the president simply say whatever he does is because he's trying to keep us safe. The president needs to be pushed to provide evidence that certain measures actually are necessary.

In this address here is as far as he was willing to go

As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the Sept. 11 attacks. And the commission criticized our nation’s inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad.

Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet in the Pentagon, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, communicated while they were in the United States, to other members of Al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn’t know they were here until it was too late.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities.
Now I suppose I should give the president the benefit of the doubt because he didn't have time to go into details (not that he's a details guy anyway). But if you don't know the terrorists are even here, how are wiretaps going to help? Just a question.

# posted 12:16 PM

Friday, December 16, 2005

The Bushies are spying on us? Shock horror.

Let's skip the handwringing and circular questions about the constitutionality and legal issues surrounding the NYT's revelations that the NSA is spying on American citizens in the name of fighting terrorism. This administration is quite clever at answering such questions using the logic of a 5-year old (e.g. "I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."). Bush tried it again today: "We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them." Let's not let legal issues cloud the debate the same way it's going with the Patriot Act. Civil liberty matters are important. But we shouldn't arrive at those discussions until we've established that specific tactics are even working. The same can be said of the torture issue.

We should first be asking the president to tell us how many terrorist plots have been foiled because officials did not have to wait an hour or two to get a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Mr. President tell us how many plot would have likely succeeded if law enforcement had taken the time to get to get those warrants. Don't tell us about sources and methods, just give us a number.

While we're on that subject, why not tell us the same thing about library records. How many times have library records helped stop and ongoing terrorist plot to kill Americans in this country? Why is does this manner of killing Americans warrant so much special attention when the plain old bullet to the head with a 9mm street crime doesn't. Dead is dead, right?

Let's not let this important issue get bogged down in legal matters that allow the White House to ignore issues of effectiveness. Demonstrate for us Mr. President exactly how this is keeping us safer. Let's keep our eye on that issue first and civil liberties a close second.

# posted 6:51 PM