January 23, 2006 8:18 AM

So, we're back to fear-mongering, then?

Rove Offers Republicans A Battle Plan For Elections

GOP leaders shift onus to detractors in domestic spying: Republicans rip Democrats, embrace program as ‘important tool’ in fighting terror

“Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if al-Qaida is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” the White House deputy chief of staff told the Republican National Committee winter meeting. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

Uh, no…Democrats, “important” or otherwise, do not agree. Of course our government should be able to use every tool available to them in the war against terror. No reasonable person is going to argue for a system that increases the likelihood of something along the lines of 9.11 recurring- in spite of what Republicans like Karl Rove would have us believe…and trust me, this is ALL about winning the propaganda war.

The reality is that there is already a legally-defined process by which an American government can set up a domestic eavesdropping operation. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act court is the current venue for determining the legality and necessity of domestic spying. And it’s not as if the FISA court is a tough nut to crack, having said “no” only five times over something like 19,000 requests. FISA is legal, it’s currently available to the Administration, and t’s a virtual rubber stamp. For anyone in the Bush Administration to claim that this process is too unwieldy and slow to respond to be useful in the war against terror is simply to be guilty of laziness and demagoguery of the worst sort.

I agree; IF Al Qaeda is talking to someone here in the United States, it would certainly be in our best interests for the government to find out what is being said. No Democrat has ever said that the US government has absolutely no right to engage in domestic spying operations. What I, and others on the Left, have maintained all along is that the government has no right to engage in a fishing expedition in hopes of finding useful information. IF the government has a credible suspicion that someone in this country is engaging in activities that run counter to our safety and security interests, it has a remedy quickly and readily available- the FISA court. Hey, it’s not as if the court is likely to say no.

IF the Administration feels that FISA is no longer a workable solution, then it is incumbent upon them to work with Congress and the intelligence community to change the law. Simply deciding that the Chief Executive need not comply with a law he finds “inconvenient” is a recipe for disaster and a black mark upon the democracy that has served us for some 230 years.

Rove’s speech, along with similar remarks by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman and Vice President Dick Cheney, demonstrated a clear shift in strategy by the party and the White House, away from trying to defend the program toward embracing and promoting it.

“I think one of the big choices before the people in 2006 is, where do you stand on this important tool,” Mehlman said. “We know that these kinds of tools would have been critical before 9/11, and so that’s an important issue that we absolutely are going to talk about.”

These tools were available prior to 9.11, and Mehlman knows damn well that this is true. This is simply more Republican fear-mongering and demagoguery, and the end result is the desire to infringe upon the civil rights of Americans. And how long will it be before government decides to use information collected about American citizens in ways that have nothing to do with the war on terror?

Rove, who remains shadowed by a continuing investigation into the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity to the news media, indicated no retreat from the blistering partisanship that helped the GOP become the dominant party in Washington.

“Republicans have a post- 9/11 worldview, and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview,” Rove said. “That doesn’t make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.”

And why does demanding that Republicans respect the law and the rights of Americans make us “profoundly and consistently wrong”? Why does rejecting the “If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?” argument make us, even by implication, “unpatriotic” and “unAmerican”?

Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida, said the lack of public resistance to the NSA program gives Republicans an opening to use it against Democrats in November.

“People are still fearful of an attack, and as long as you have that probability and then Osama resurfacing, it’s easy to bring the terror issue from one that’s bubbling away to one that’s actually boiling, because it deals with people’s security,” she said.

The problem here is that Republicans are more than willing to play on the fears of the American sheeple. They know that if they can convince Joe and Marge Sixpack that the terrorists are just around the corner, even if only metaphorically, that they will be given carte blance. Most Americans frankly don’t much care about the erosion of their rights, as long as they’re safe. What they don’t realize is that the rights they are so willing to part with today will not be easily returned to them tomorrow.

This country did not become what it is today by giving in to demagogues. Who knows where we would be today if Americans had allowed Joe McCarthy or Richard Nixon free reign? Yet here we are, allowing Our Glorious Leader and his corrupt cabal to gradually and inexorably chip away at our civil rights. Is this the kind of country we want? Is this the kind of leadership we deserve?

Sadly, the answer seems to be an unqualified “yes”…and we are all the poorer for it.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 23, 2006 8:18 AM.

And it's easier than dealing with the truth, eh? was the previous entry in this blog.

But He apparently does hear the prayers of those who vote Republican is the next entry in this blog.

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