From Bad to Worse
I fell asleep with the TV on last night. I awoke to breaking news: Bush, on tape, being briefed about the expected devastation from Hurricane Katrina--the day before the storm hit New Orleans. Bush is seen listening to various warnings from experts who had studied the data and knew what to expect. Bush asked no questions. At the end of the briefing, which he took from his vacation home in Crawford, Texas, our president looked the camera squarely in the eye and said that the federal government was prepared and would move quickly to do whatever was necessary for the victims of the storm.
Yet, I seem to recall hearing that three days after Katrina made landfall, our president had to be force-fed a video-taped version of TV highlights in order to impress upon him the extent of the devastation. Then, when FEMA failed to provide the assistance the desperate and neglected residents of New Orleans needed, we were told it was the local and state officials who were to blame--for failing to file the proper paperwork to get the Feds rolling.
Now we know, unequivocally, that Bush had all the information he needed to act before the storm hit--but he didn't act, did he? And that's not the worst of it--not by half.
Even as civil rights activists are fighting to get Congress to investigate the domestic wiretapping program Bush says is within the law (but most of us believe isn't) it has come out that the wiretapping program Bush authorized may not be the only secret program to which the American public is being subjected. It appears that when Congress told the Bush administration to cut their Total Information Awareness program, because it violated the privacy rights of American citizens, the administration simply moved the program to another area within the government and gave it a new name. So, perhaps they weren't lying, after all, when they said the domestic spying program is only used for terrorist suspects--because the spying they do on the rest of us is through an entirely different program--one that was supposed to be stopped two years ago--one that, until a few days ago, nobody even knew enough to ask about.
Here is an excerpt from the February 27 episode of Democracy Now:
More than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA.
But wait, there's more: While protesters are fighting to shut down the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it has come out that an even more medieval prison, also run by U.S. interests, has been growing its inmate population, in Afghanistan.
The U.S. is holding 500 at the base in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Some have been detained for up to three years. They have never been charged with crimes. They have no access to lawyers. They are barred from hearing the allegations against them. Officials describe the jail's conditions as primitive.
Meanwhile, Congress just passed another Patriot Act renewal. They decided not to worry about the pesky little provisions that violate our civil rights and instead chose to focus on the supposed improvement in communication between law enforcement and the various Homeland Security agencies. The rationale given is that this particular improvement is at the heart of the Patriot Act, so Congress figured it would be better not to worry so much about all the other stuff they were previously so riled about.
Meanwhile, John Conyers, the only politician who has consistently had the guts to fight the administration at every turn, starting with the stolen elections (I refer to 2000 AND 2004), is now the latest smear target of the Bush administration. Just yesterday I heard on the news that Conyers has been over-utilizing his paid assistants by asking them to baby sit. How sad. No steamy extramarital affair, homosexual encounter or drug problem. Is that really all they can come up with? Goodness, I think they're losing their touch.
The only thing I can figure out that explains how the rest of Congress laid down and died here is that they're all just as sleazy and corrupt as their high-profile Republican counterparts and have either committed some serious illegal actions themselves, which they know all too well will become the breaking news of the day, should they fight Bush and his band of bullies, or they've figured out that even if they have no major closet skeletons, the Bush machine will be happy to conjure some on their behalf. Either way, the bullies in the White House are still running the show and the rest of us are just taking up space in the cheap seats. That's some sorry excuse for Democracy, that's all I can say.
Yet, I seem to recall hearing that three days after Katrina made landfall, our president had to be force-fed a video-taped version of TV highlights in order to impress upon him the extent of the devastation. Then, when FEMA failed to provide the assistance the desperate and neglected residents of New Orleans needed, we were told it was the local and state officials who were to blame--for failing to file the proper paperwork to get the Feds rolling.
Now we know, unequivocally, that Bush had all the information he needed to act before the storm hit--but he didn't act, did he? And that's not the worst of it--not by half.
Even as civil rights activists are fighting to get Congress to investigate the domestic wiretapping program Bush says is within the law (but most of us believe isn't) it has come out that the wiretapping program Bush authorized may not be the only secret program to which the American public is being subjected. It appears that when Congress told the Bush administration to cut their Total Information Awareness program, because it violated the privacy rights of American citizens, the administration simply moved the program to another area within the government and gave it a new name. So, perhaps they weren't lying, after all, when they said the domestic spying program is only used for terrorist suspects--because the spying they do on the rest of us is through an entirely different program--one that was supposed to be stopped two years ago--one that, until a few days ago, nobody even knew enough to ask about.
Here is an excerpt from the February 27 episode of Democracy Now:
More than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA.
But wait, there's more: While protesters are fighting to shut down the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it has come out that an even more medieval prison, also run by U.S. interests, has been growing its inmate population, in Afghanistan.
The U.S. is holding 500 at the base in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Some have been detained for up to three years. They have never been charged with crimes. They have no access to lawyers. They are barred from hearing the allegations against them. Officials describe the jail's conditions as primitive.
Meanwhile, Congress just passed another Patriot Act renewal. They decided not to worry about the pesky little provisions that violate our civil rights and instead chose to focus on the supposed improvement in communication between law enforcement and the various Homeland Security agencies. The rationale given is that this particular improvement is at the heart of the Patriot Act, so Congress figured it would be better not to worry so much about all the other stuff they were previously so riled about.
Meanwhile, John Conyers, the only politician who has consistently had the guts to fight the administration at every turn, starting with the stolen elections (I refer to 2000 AND 2004), is now the latest smear target of the Bush administration. Just yesterday I heard on the news that Conyers has been over-utilizing his paid assistants by asking them to baby sit. How sad. No steamy extramarital affair, homosexual encounter or drug problem. Is that really all they can come up with? Goodness, I think they're losing their touch.
The only thing I can figure out that explains how the rest of Congress laid down and died here is that they're all just as sleazy and corrupt as their high-profile Republican counterparts and have either committed some serious illegal actions themselves, which they know all too well will become the breaking news of the day, should they fight Bush and his band of bullies, or they've figured out that even if they have no major closet skeletons, the Bush machine will be happy to conjure some on their behalf. Either way, the bullies in the White House are still running the show and the rest of us are just taking up space in the cheap seats. That's some sorry excuse for Democracy, that's all I can say.
posted by LA Fosner at 7:34 PM
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