Illegal and Inept. One or both of these words can be applied to nearly every policy initiated by the current administration (ass-ministration?).
Bob Herbert: Illegal and Inept - New York Times
While testifying about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked to explain how the program had been damaged by the disclosure of its existence in the press.Senator Joseph Biden suggested that Al Qaeda operatives have most likely been aware for some time that the government is trying to intercept their phone calls.
Mr. Gonzales agreed. “You would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance,” he said. “But if they're not reminded about it all the time in newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget.”
Senator Biden managed to laugh. Probably to keep from crying. This was the attorney general of the United States speaking, yet another straight man for an administration that has raised governing to new heights of witlessness. Watching the Bush administration in action would be hilarious, if its ineptitude and brutally misguided policies didn't end so often in needless suffering and sorrow.
The public should be aware of two important points about the president's domestic spying program: it's illegal, and it's not catching terrorists.
emphasis mine
Unless you define terrorists as vegans, Quakers, PETA, anti-war protesters, Cindy Sheehan, yadda yadda.
I repeat myself when under stress, I repeat myself when under stress.....
Apart from the legal issues, it's increasingly clear that the president's program is contributing little if anything to the effort to protect Americans from Qaeda-type terrorism.Senator Biden asked Mr. Gonzales whether the program had achieved any results. Mr. Gonzales said it had helped identify “would-be terrorists here in the United States.”
“Have we arrested those people?” asked Mr. Biden. “Have we arrested the people we've identified as terrorists in the United States?”
The attorney general's reply left people shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes. “When we can use our law enforcement tools to go after the bad guys,” he said, “we do that.”
Senator Biden tried to push the issue, but Mr. Gonzales would not elaborate. Mr. Biden finally said: “Well, I hope we arrested them — if you identified them. I mean, it kind of worries me because you all talk about how you identify these people, and I've not heard anything about anybody being arrested.”
A clue to Mr. Gonzales's reluctance to discuss the achievements of the president's domestic spying program could be found on the front page of The Washington Post on Sunday. A long article about the program began as follows:
“Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.”
To laugh or to cry — that is the question as we contemplate three more years of this theater of the absurd known as the Bush administration.
Tags: Bob_Herbert, /Worst_President
