Support for Bush

Once again, the Left is out of touch and living in a pre-9/11 fantasy.

Rasmussen Reports offers some interesting figures on the "domestic spying" issue, very interesting.

As always, I must add my qualification that I believe polls reveal more about the creators of the survey than its participants. Polls can be constructed to "discover" the desired results.

However, even taking that into consideration, this new poll from Rasmussen will most likely give the foaming at the mouth Dems and their lib mainstream media mouthpieces pause.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Americans say they are following the NSA story somewhat or very closely.

Just 26% believe President Bush is the first to authorize a program like the one currently in the news. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he is not while 26% are not sure.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans believe the NSA should be allowed to listen in on conversations between terror suspects and people living in the United States. That view is shared by 51% of Democrats and 57% of those not affiliated with either major political party.

I think most Americans are not critical of the Bush Adminstration's tactics for combatting terror because they realize that their personal privacy is not at risk. They know themselves to be loyal Americans and, as a result, not targets of terrorism investigations.

Even the majority of Dems support what the Bush Administration has done in this case. Even they have an inkling of exceptions regarding privacy that may need to be made in the name national security.

It appears that Americans get what the Leftists don't.

Unlike those on the far radical Left, Americans know that the Bush Administration does not have a devious plan to erode the civil liberties of citizens. It's about safety.

IT'S THE TERRORISTS, STUPID!

Triumph in Iraq

Craig Jenness

The UN has given its stamp of approval on the legitmacy of the December 15 Iraq elections.


BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A United Nations official said Wednesday that Iraq's recent elections were credible and there was no justification for a rerun of the vote that gave a strong lead to the Shiite religious bloc dominating the current government.

...The United Nations official, Craig Jenness, said at a news conference organized by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that the U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be credible and transparent. "Turnout was high and the day was largely peaceful, all communities participated."

...Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in that place, but not to hold a rerun. There were more than 1,500 complaints made about the elections, with about 50 of them considered serious enough to possibly result in the cancellation of results in some places.

"After studying all the complaints, and after the manual and electronic audit of samples of ballot boxes in the provinces, the electoral commission will announce within the next few days some decisions about canceling the results in stations where fraud was found," said Abdul Hussein Hendawi, an elections official.

He said fraud had been discovered in the provinces of Baghdad, Irbil, Ninevah, Kirkuk, Anbar and Diyala.

Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one in every 7,000 voters. About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters took part in the elections. He added that the U.N. saw no reason to hold a new ballot.

"Complaints must be adjudicated fairly, but we in the United Nations see no justification in calls for a rerun of any election," he said.

No election is perfect; but what took place in Iraq two weeks ago came close.

Just as in America, voter fraud must be weeded out.

Without question, tainted election results discredit the democratic process. I'm not diminishing the significance of problems in the Iraqi elections. Any fraud is a serious matter.

Nevertheless, the Iraqi voters should be proud of their blossoming democracy. They owe their precious freedom to the bravery and sacrifice of the U.S. military and the coalition partners.

It still disturbs me that these successful elections, this unquestionable triumph, received relatively little attention.

The New York Times managed to take the Iraqi elections off the national radar screen by timing its "domestic spying" splash to coincide with that stupendous news out of Iraq.

I guess it was too difficult for the Times to accept. Very slimy.

Business as usual at the New York Times...

Dowd Demonizes Dick

In "Vice Axes That 70's Show," Maureen Dowd displays her usual lunacy.

This time, she digs her claws into Dick Cheney. She digs deep, ending the year with a big, liberal, paranoid bang.

It's vintage Maureenie - exactly what we've come to know and ... , well, what we've come to know.

Dowd writes:

We start the new year with the same old fear: Dick Cheney.

I can't say that I'm afraid of Dick Cheney. Nope, I'm not starting off the new year with that fear.

Maureenie doesn't speak for me.


The vice president, who believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping, is so pathologically secretive that if you use Google Earth's database to see his official residence, the view is scrambled and obscured. You can view satellite photos of the White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol - but not of the Lord of the Underworld's lair.

Maureenie is being intentionally misleading. She asserts that Cheney "believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping." That's ridiculous.

The Vice President believes in doing all that we can do to protect ourselves from TERRORISTS. That's not the same as a license for "unwarranted, unlimited" snooping.

Have 900 hundred FBI files been discovered in Cheney's office?

Oh, that's right. I'm thinking of the Clinton White House.

If the Bush Administration has been digging into the private lives of individuals not considered to possibly have connections with TERRORISTS, or individuals that do not pose a possible NATIONAL SECURITY RISK, I would deem that a shameful, inexcusable abuse of power.

For instance, if the FBI files of prominent Dems were found in Cheney's possession, I would call that a serious infraction. Such actions would be akin to the abuses under President Clinton. It would be completely unacceptable.

However, as usual, Maureenie makes generalizations that she cannot back up.

While she calls Cheney "pathologically secretive," I think Maureenie is pathologically delusional.

"Lord of the Underworld's lair"? That is positively cartoonish.

Maureenie has truly lost it. She sounds like the looniest of the Left, and that is really loony.

Vice is literally a shadow president. He's obsessive about privacy - but, unfortunately, only his own.

I consider the New York Times and Maureenie to be obsessed - with bringing down the Bush Administration.

"He's obsessive about privacy - but, unfortunately, only his own."

What a silly statement!

Like so many libs, Maureenie has gone so over the top that her views are laughable. What she writes cannot be taken as serious analysis.

Speaking of privacy, a few months back, didn't the New York Times attempt to snoop into the adoption records of the children of John Roberts?

YES. Privacy concerns? Right.

That brings to mind another example of liberal hypocrisy.

In September, Michelle Malkin wrote:

"Have you heard what Democrats working for Sen. Charles Schumer at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee tried to do here in my home state of Maryland to bring down Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele?

"Steele, a rising star in the party, is considering a Senate bid. Two of Schumer's staffers, including a former researcher for David Brock's Media Matters, obtained Steele's credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly and willfully obtain a credit report under false pretenses.

"There has been no outcry from privacy advocates, the ACLU, the champions of clean campaigns, or any major MSM editorial board. Needless to say, if it had been Republicans involved in this outrageous scheme and the target had been a liberal minority politician, it would be a front-page NYTimes scandal. The Times (surprise, surprise) has yet to cover the story..."

The libs' selective outrage is so unbecoming, not to mention discrediting.

Back to Maureenie:

Google Earth users alerted The Times to this latest bit of Cheney concealment after a front-page story last week about the international fears inspired by free Google software that features detailed displays of things like government and military sites around the world.

"For a brief period," they reported, "photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured." So Google replaced those images with unaltered photographs taken by a private company.

Even though the story did not mention the Cheney residence - and even though it's not near the White House - The Times ran a clarifying correction yesterday that said, "The view of the vice president's residence in Washington remains obscured."

Fitting, since Vice has turned America into a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that turns things upside down.

Considering that the Pentagon was hit and the World Trade Center was destroyed by TERRORISTS, does anyone really think that it's out of line to obscure the details of high profile targets?

Way to assist TERRORISTS, Google! Very nice.

Moreover, is Maureenie actually saying that Cheney controls Google? She is suggesting that he somehow managed to keep views of his residence shrouded in secrecy.

That's just goofy. Typical Maureenie.

Guys argue that women tend to stew and hold grudges more, sometimes popping up to blow the whistle on a man's bad behavior years later, like a missile out of the night, as Alan Simpson said of Anita Hill.

Yet look at Cheney and Rummy. Their steroid-infused power grabs stem from their years stewing in the Ford White House, a time when they felt emasculated because they were stripped of prerogatives.

More of Maureenie's psychobabble and armchair psychoanalysis--

Funny, as well as psycho.

Clearly, Maureenie has issues.

Rummy, a Ford chief of staff who became defense secretary, and his protégé, Cheney, who succeeded him as chief of staff, felt diminished by the post-Watergate laws and reforms that reduced the executive branch's ability to be secretive and unilateral, tilting power back toward Congress.

The 70's were also a heady period for the press, which reached the zenith of its power when it swayed public opinion on Vietnam and exposed Watergate. Reporters got greater access to government secrets with a stronger Freedom of Information Act.

Chenrummy thought the press was running amok, that leaks should be plugged and that Congress was snatching power that rightfully belonged to the White House.

So these two crusty pals spent 30 years dreaming of inflating the deflated presidential muscularity. Cheney christened himself vice president and brought in Rummy for the most ridiculously pumped-up presidency ever. All this was fine with W., whose family motto is: "We know best. Trust us."

Oh my God! Maureenie has really gone over the edge. I think she's in desperate need of an intervention.

Her construction of these lame scenarios creeps me out. It's weird.

The two regents turned back the clock to the Nixon era, bringing back presidential excesses like wiretapping along with presidential power. As attorney general, John Ashcroft clamped down on the Freedom of Information Act. For two years, the Pentagon has been sitting on a request from The Times's Jeff Gerth to cough up a secret 500-page document prepared by Halliburton on what to do with Iraq's oil industry - a plan it wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.). Very convenient.

Defending warrantless wiretapping last week, the vice president spoke of his distaste for the erosion of presidential authority in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

"I do believe that, especially in the day and age we live in, the nature of the threats we face, it was true during the cold war, as well as I think what is true now, the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," he intoned. Translation: Back off, Congress and the press.

Checks, balances, warrants, civil liberties - they're all so 20th century. Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency.

Maureenie is truly doing a disservice here.

She is completely dismissing the realities of past presidencies, Dem presidencies. Maureenie is the Queen of Sins of Omission.

Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?

Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace.

Of course, she's suggesting that the Demon Dick wanted to personally profit from U.S. oil consumption.

Gee, what did the Clinton Administration do to help the country kick its oil addiction?

Maureenie fans, consider this:

Researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government examined the environmental policy record of former President Bill Clinton. Environmental quality improved overall during the decade, the researchers found, continuing a trend that began in the 1970s, although improvements were much less than during the previous two decades.

From 1997, something else to consider:

[In the 1996 election, Clinton's] record on the environment wasn't based on a record of positive achievement but instead on his attacks on Congress. The president had prevented deep cuts in spending on the Environmental Protection Agency and he claimed credit for stopping the most egregious attempts to revise regulations such as those regarding endangered species and water quality standards. But the real Clinton environmental record centers not on the salvation of Nixon-era regulations and agencies, but on what has been left undone.

Criticism from environmental groups has centered on the lack of action in two important areas: local air-quality control standards and global greenhouse emissions. On air-quality, the White House has taken what it would like to call a centrist position. The Clinton administration remained silent on demands by EPA head Carol Browner for tougher standards, but also resisted Republican demands for changes that might reduce standards for certain localities.

If we are to accept the theory that Cheney was motivated by a quest for personal profits from oil, what was Clinton's reasons for failing to push for stricter environmental regulations and alternative energy sources?

Obviously, in terms of the truth, Maureenie is thoroughly misguided and intentionally misleading.

She's lucky that the Times and other lib propaganda rags suffer from the same lack of direction and morality. The woman has an audience that accepts her babbling as gospel and buys into the demonization of Vice President Cheney.

It's sad, but true.

The Recruits

Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah is spouting off about the arsenal of weapons that he has poised to attack Americans and our allies.

He claims that his weapons stockpile includes more than 200 human bombs.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A top Taliban commander said more than 200 rebel fighters were willing to become suicide attackers against U.S. forces and their allies _ a claim dismissed as propaganda Monday by Afghanistan's government, which said the hard-line militia was weakening. In an interview late Sunday with The Associated Press, the commander, Mullah Dadullah, ruled out any reconciliation with the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and claimed the country's new parliament _ its first in more than 30 years, inaugurated last week _ was "obedient to America."

..."More than 200 Taliban have registered themselves for suicide attacks with us which shows that a Muslim can even sacrifice his life for the well-being of his faith. Our suicide attackers will continue jihad (holy war) until Americans and all of their Muslim and non-Muslim allies are pulled out of the country," he said.

Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Defense Ministry, dismissed Dadullah's claims of rebel strength as "propaganda" and said Afghanistan had enough security forces to deal with the rebels.

"The Taliban are isolated. The Taliban have no power. They are using land mines and terror activities ... or suicide attacks. These kind of operations show they are not strong and that they are weak," Azimi told the AP.

Azimi nails it.

Engaging in terrorist tactics and suicide attacks reveals the weakness of the radical Islamic fundamentalists, not their strength.

They practice a hateful ideology, where victory is only measured by destruction, including destroying themselves.

In November, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said intelligence indicated that a number of Arab al-Qaida members and other foreigners had entered Afghanistan to launch suicide attacks, and a senior government official said 22 would-be suicide bombers were believed to be in the country waiting for orders to attack.

Dadullah implied that the Taliban and al-Qaida were working together, and said mujahedeen from various parts of the world, including Arabs, were fighting in Afghanistan. He said the foreigners made up about 10 percent of the fighters.

"Both Taliban and al-Qaida have the same objectives," he said, warning that anyone supporting the Americans and the government "will be dealt with."

...In another sign that links between the Taliban and al-Qaida have continued, a tape of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri surfaced this month in which he praised the Taliban chief Mullah Omar. In the tape, al-Zawahri claimed the rebel leader had won back control of extensive areas of western and eastern Afghanistan, though government and U.S. officials say the Taliban's influence is in fact waning.

...Dadullah ruled out reconciliation and talks with Karzai's government, saying it "owed its existence" to non-Muslims, and to do so would amount to "joining Christianity and working for Christians."

"My talks with them will only be for their destruction and nothing else," he said.

Karzai has encouraged Taliban members to leave the extremist group, renounce terrorism and go through a formal reconciliation program. So far, several hundred rank-and-file members and some 50 senior officials have done so, including some who ran in September's parliamentary elections.

That's not very PC of Dadullah to be so intolerant of Christians, is it?

To illustrate the Left's goofy relativism regarding Afghanistan, the Taliban, and bin Laden, let's flashback to an interview that Bill O'Reilly did with Michael Moore in July, 2004.




O: Would you sacrifice yourself to remove the Taliban?

M: I would be willing to sacrifice my life to track down the people that killed 3,000 people on our soil.

O: Al Qaeda was given refuge by the Taliban.

M: But we didn’t go after them—did we?

O: We removed the Taliban and killed three quarters of Al Qaeda.

M: That’s why the Taliban are still killing our soldiers there.

O: OK, well look you can't kill everybody. You wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan—you wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan, would you?

M: No, I would have gone after the man that killed 3,000 people.

O: How?

M: As Richard Clarke says, our special forces were prohibited for two months from going to the area that we believed Osama was—

O: Why was that?

M: That’s my question.

O: Because Pakistan didn’t want its territory of sovereignty violated.

M: Not his was in Afghanistan, on the border, we didn’t go there. He got a two month head start.

O: Alright, you would not have removed the Taliban. You would not have removed that government?

M: No, unless it is a threat to us.

Moore really is clueless.

He thinks the Taliban should have been allowed to remain in power. Apparently, he believes that just the al Qaeda members directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks should have been "tracked down."

That's the old Bill Clinton law enforcement 1990s strategy of dealing with terrorism. Of course, we know what a miserable failure that was.

In Moore's world, the 9/11 attacks were not acts of war. They were crimes.

Taliban commander Dadullah brags to the AP about the band of suicide bombers that he has at his disposal. The links between the Taliban and al Qaeda were, and still are, irrefutable; yet Moore actually said that he didn't see the Taliban as a threat to the United States.

Dr. Dean also considered the 9/11 attacks to be criminal.




Remember this? Two years ago, December 26, 2003, an interview detailing Dean's plan for bin Laden was made public.

New Hampshire's Concord Monitor reported that Dean said he would not state his preference on a punishment for bin Laden before the al Qaeda leader was captured and put before a jury.

"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said in the interview. "I will have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."

This comes from the chairman of the DNC. It's truly mind-boggling. It's frightening. It's insane!

This is the mindset of the whiny liberal appeasers that view Bush and the Republicans as the enemy rather than the terrorists.

Moore's cluelessness and Dean's lunacy remind me of House MINORITY leader Nancy Pelosi and her many utterly witless comments regarding the War on Terror.



From the Washington Times, June 23, 2005:

On Tuesday, Mrs. Pelosi and three other top Democrats called for a commission to investigate reported abuses of detainees from the war on terror. Mrs. Pelosi said it is past time that the administration established a policy on determining the fates of the detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arguing that most are from Afghanistan and that the conflict there has ended.

"I assume that the war in Afghanistan is over, or is the contention that you have that it continues?" she said to a reporter.

A few moments later, she said: "This isn't about the duration of the war. The war in Afghanistan is over."

In June, Pelosi declared the war in Afghanistan to be over.

In the final days of December, Dadullah thinks otherwise.

What clearer examples could there be that the libs cannot be trusted with national security?

In his address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001, President Bush prepared the country for a long and difficult struggle in battling the ideology that prompted nineteen men to hijack civilian airliners and kill three thousand men, women, and children on our soil.

Obviously, Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and like-minded Leftists didn't get it then and they don't get it now.

I have to believe that they don't understand the enemy and they don't understand what's at stake.

If they really understood, would they proceed in trying to undermine the Bush Administration's efforts to keep Americans and all free people safe from the violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists?

Can the libs really be that self-serving and politically motivated?

Could anyone be that irresponsible?
__________________

(Hint: To answer these questions, just read the New York Times or watch NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc.)

Silent Night

Mary, did you know
that your baby boy will one day walk on water?

Mary, did you know
that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?

Did you know,
that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered,
will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know
that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know
your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?

Did you know,
that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby,
you've kissed the face of God.

The blind will see
The deaf will hear
The dead will live again.
The lame will leap
The dumb will speak
The praises of The Lamb.

Mary, did you know
that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?

Mary, did you know
that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?

Did you know,
that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?
This sleeping child you're holding, is the great I AM.

Selective Outrage

Arlene Getz asks in an Internet piece for Newsweek, "Where's the Outrage?"

It's right here.

I'm outraged that Newsweek continues to promote its transparent anti-Bush campaign by giving Getz a forum for her drivel.

She writes:


Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg and reporting on apartheid South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a tasteless confession. She was "quite relieved," she told me, that new media restrictions prohibited our reporting on government repression. No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands of people without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them, including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter that government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter that police were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting against their disenfranchisement. "It's so nice," confided my neighbor, "not to open the papers and read all that bad news."

I thought about that neighbor this week, as reports dribbled out about President George W. Bush's sanctioning of warrantless eavesdropping on American conversations. For anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is always a given. But U.S. citizens have always been lucky enough to believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of U.S. civil liberties?

Maybe Americans have reacted "insipidly" because they understand the post-9/11 world, an understanding that the Left seems to lack. If liberals do understand the realities of wartime, then they have made a conscious decision to pursue personal political gain by risking national security.

Getz's comparison of life in the U.S. today with apartheid South Africa is disgraceful.

Such ridiculous assertions are the ramblings of an obviously confused person, someone incapable of grasping the issues, let alone reality.

Can you imagine discussing counterterrorism with Getz, listening to her goofy rant, nodding politely, and all the while thinking, "That poor befuddled woman"?

I'm sure there are many well-meaning Americans who agree with their president's explanation that it's all a necessary evil (and that patriotic citizens will not be spied on unless they dial up Osama bin Laden). But the nasty echoes of apartheid South Africa should at least give them pause. While Bush uses the rhetoric of "evildoers" and the "global war on terror," Pretoria talked of "total onslaught." This was the catchphrase of P. W. Botha, South Africa's head of state from 1978 to 1989. Botha was hardly the first white South African leader to ride roughshod over civil liberties for all races, but he did it more effectively than many of his predecessors. Botha liked to tell South Africans that the country was under "total onslaught" from forces both within and without, and that this global assault was his rationale for allowing opponents to be jailed, beaten or killed. Likewise, the Bush administration has adopted the argument that anything is justified in the name of national security.

"Anything is justified in the name of national security."

Unbelievable!

Where was Getz on September 11, 2001?



Did she see people jumping from the upper floors of the burning World Trade Center towers, preferring to plunge to their deaths rather than be consumed by the flames?

Did she hear the heart-wrenching final messages of love left by victims of the attacks on the answering machines of their family members?

Did she attend funeral after funeral of the firefighters murdered when the towers collapsed? Did she look into the eyes of the widows and the children of the fallen?

How can she compare a government that jailed, beat, and killed its own citizens with life in post 9/11 America?

It is absurd.

No connection can be made with eavesdropping to prevent a reoccurrence of the horror of 9/11 and the abuses of apartheid South Africa.

President Bush is not the leader of a repressive regime. There is no systematic effort to strip away our freedoms. The fact that Newsweek and other liberal rags are free to publish their lies proves that.

Botha was right about South Africa being under attack. Internally, blacks and a few whites were waging a low-level guerrilla war to topple the government. Externally, activists across the globe were mobilizing economic sanctions and campaigns to ostracize Pretoria. By the same token, we all know that Bush is right about the United States facing a very real threat of further terror. Yet should Americans really be willing to accept that autocratic end-justifies-the-means argument?

For so many around the world, the United States is as much a symbol as a nation. Outsiders may scoff at American naiveté in thinking that their conversations are private, but they envy them for growing up in a society so sheltered that it made such a belief possible. Among those who feel this way is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his principled fight for justice in his native country. "It's unbelievable," he told me in an interview, "that a country that many of us have looked to as the bastion of true freedom could now have eroded so many of the liberties we believed were upheld almost religiously."

The problem with Leftists like Getz whining about the erosion of civil liberties is that they act as if American history began the day George W. Bush took the oath of office as the 43rd President of the United States.

Why wasn't there concern about the erosion of civil liberties under other administrations?

Do I need to go into the activities of Clinton's tenure?

Several instances of "erosion" prior to Bush's first term have been highlighted by a number of publications in recent days.

A few examples:

1) Clinton enemies were targeted by IRS audits.

2) The confidential tax returns of Paula Jones were leaked to the media.

3) The Clintons had 1,100 FBI files sent to the White House Counsel's office.

4) Warrantless eavesdropping occurred under the international communications espionage network, codenamed Echelon.

5) One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames' home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.

6) In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.

7) In 1978, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two men suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnam government.

8) In 1978, Congress approved and Mr. Carter signed FISA, which created the secret court and required federal agents to get approval to conduct electronic surveillance in most foreign intelligence cases.

These are just a few recent examples. A quick glance at what FDR or Lincoln did as wartime presidents strenthens the case that Getz and her lib cohorts are being highly selective in their criticism of the Bush Administration.

Furthermore, it appears that Tutu's knowledge of activities by previous administrations is quite limited.

Tutu recalled teaching in Jacksonville, Fla., when Bush won re-election in 2004. "I was shocked," he said, "because I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view." Tutu made these comments to me exactly a year ago next week. I haven't seen any reaction from him about the latest eavesdropping revelations, but I doubt he is remotely surprised at the U.S. president's response: a defense of the tactic, together with a warning that the government would launch an investigation to find out who leaked the news to The New York Times.

This is disgusting.

Tutu's belief that freedom of speech is being squelched under President Bush is embarrassingly misguided.

Those buying into the Left’s propaganda are the naïve ones.

Moreover, why is Getz outraged over President Bush's defense of utilizing the same tactics that other administrations used?

Short answer: She's a propagandist, a partisan hack.

Getz concludes:

It's not fair, of course, to suggest that all citizens are indifferent to violations of their privacy and their rights to free speech. Yet as I've watched this debate play out, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that not enough Americans really care. Like my Johannesburg neighbor, they seem to hope that unpleasant news will disappear if you just ignore it. It didn't then, and it won't now.

I am not indifferent to privacy issues. Believe me, I really care. I am certain that I value my privacy as much as Getz values hers. I share her concern about the importance of protecting our civil liberties. I agree with her that "unpleasantness" won’t go away simply by ignoring it.

However, there is a problem with Getz’s argument: It is not grounded in reality.

She is either being intentionally misleading in order to instill fear in Americans to convince them to lose confidence in Bush; or she is worrying about monsters under the bed.

Comparing America in 2005 to apartheid South Africa is nuts.

She frames the debate as being about an assault on civil liberties, as though the evil “King George” is bent on abusing the American people. She ignores the fact that provisions of the Patriot Act and other tactics are being used to combat TERRORISM, not harass or threaten or trample on the rights of citizens with impunity.

While I believe that we must always focus on upholding our freedoms, it is disingenuous of Getz and others to turn the matter of how to effectively handle the very real terrorist threat into an imaginary war on the civil liberties of Americans, waged by the Bush Administration.

IT'S THE TERRORISTS, STUPID!

BUSH LIED

"The man in the White House is a liar."

Who said that?

Of course, the possibilities are endless.

Dr. Dean
Jimmy Carter
John Kerry
Russ Feingold
Ted Kennedy
John Edwards
Harry Reid
Nancy Pelosi
Dick Durbin
Joe Biden
Jay Rockefeller
Hillary Clinton
Chuck Schumer
John Murtha
60 Minutes Staff
The New York Times Newsroom
Maureen Dowd
Paul Krugman
Frank Rich
Michael Moore
Cindy Sheehan
Al Franken

(I'll stop there. I'm starting to feel nauseous.)

Although all of these Americans have made that statement in some form, the specific quote goes to SADDAM HUSSEIN.



Al Jazeera (the Eastern bureau -- not the NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR outlets) writes:

Saddam Hussein has accused the White House of lying about his alleged stockpiles of chemical weapons as well as the claim that he was tortured in US custody.

Speaking on Thursday at the start of the seventh session of his trial on charges of crimes against humanity, the former Iraqi president rekindled his battle of words with Washington.

"Zionists and Americans, I mean officials, hate Saddam Hussein," Saddam said. "The man in the White House is a liar. He said there are chemical weapons in Iraq.

"He later said that, 'We did not find anything in Iraq'."

Referring to a White House statement that his claims that he had been tortured were preposterous, Saddam said: "They lied again when they said that what Saddam said was wrong."

On Wednesday, Saddam accused the Americans of beating him in custody and said he had the bruises to prove it.

Saddam said: "I had my injuries documented by three American [medical] teams." He did not say where or when he was allegedly beaten.

This must be playing well in the enlightened liberal elite circles. Saddam is an ally.

We know Dan Rather is his personal buddy.

Saddam sounds just like someone on the radical Left.

Would distinguished ex-President Carter argue with Saddam's comment that Bush is a liar? Would any of the people I cited?

NO. They've all been saying the same thing.

The question: Has Saddam taken his cues from the American Left, or has the American Left taken cues from Saddam?

In the end, the answer is irrelevant. They're on the same page.

The things that Saddam is saying in order to garner support from his backers, insurgents, and assorted terrorists, the ones that kill innocent civilians and our troops, is what American libs are saying.

Isn't that nice?