The NSA Is Listening
Dec. 21st, 2005 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertango[insert THX sweep tone here]
One of the things that keeps happening with this administration is how they keep breaking the rules without realizing how those rules benefit them. In other words, without realizing how much of a gunshot to the foot such breaking is.
For example, if I had been on Air Force Two the other day when Mr. Cheney was entertaining questions, mine would have been, "Mr. Vice-President, how do you know you yourself haven't had an NSA wiretap ordered against you?" He would have harrumphed and harrawed, and my follow-up would have been, "Mr. Cheney, as Mr. Rumsfeld has said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Really -- How do you know?"
Because, let's face it folks... If'n I was Dubya, Cheney's number one on my who to spy on list -- just out of self-preservation.
But you can extend the principle any direction you like. Has John McCain been wiretapped? Hillary Clinton? Pat Robertson? Michael Moore? Elliot Spitzer?
John Kerry, during the 2004 campaign?
What the administration doesn't seem to realize is they're now in the same pickle we put the Iraqis in. Having admitted they used extra-legal means to extend these wiretaps, how can any response to those questions be credible? Had they always followed the rules, they could point to the lack of a paper trail, or to a set of procedures that needed to be followed and wasn't... But now? They junked those procedures, they deliberately avoided the paper trail.
The most damning thing of all is how obedient the FISA Court has been in the past to their requests. Given the very high probability the FISA Court would have given them their wink and a nod, the question presents itself, "What would be so egregious the FISA Court wouldn't go along, so they had to do this end run?"
Mull that one over for a while, and you may realize my potential subjects for wiretaps aren't too hypothetical after all.
One of the things that keeps happening with this administration is how they keep breaking the rules without realizing how those rules benefit them. In other words, without realizing how much of a gunshot to the foot such breaking is.
For example, if I had been on Air Force Two the other day when Mr. Cheney was entertaining questions, mine would have been, "Mr. Vice-President, how do you know you yourself haven't had an NSA wiretap ordered against you?" He would have harrumphed and harrawed, and my follow-up would have been, "Mr. Cheney, as Mr. Rumsfeld has said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Really -- How do you know?"
Because, let's face it folks... If'n I was Dubya, Cheney's number one on my who to spy on list -- just out of self-preservation.
But you can extend the principle any direction you like. Has John McCain been wiretapped? Hillary Clinton? Pat Robertson? Michael Moore? Elliot Spitzer?
John Kerry, during the 2004 campaign?
What the administration doesn't seem to realize is they're now in the same pickle we put the Iraqis in. Having admitted they used extra-legal means to extend these wiretaps, how can any response to those questions be credible? Had they always followed the rules, they could point to the lack of a paper trail, or to a set of procedures that needed to be followed and wasn't... But now? They junked those procedures, they deliberately avoided the paper trail.
The most damning thing of all is how obedient the FISA Court has been in the past to their requests. Given the very high probability the FISA Court would have given them their wink and a nod, the question presents itself, "What would be so egregious the FISA Court wouldn't go along, so they had to do this end run?"
Mull that one over for a while, and you may realize my potential subjects for wiretaps aren't too hypothetical after all.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 06:37 pm (UTC)TK