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December 20, 2005

Snoopgate

Yeah, its got a name.

Apparently courtesy of Jonathan Alter..we have Snoopgate. Which makes me think of Snoopy as Joe Cool.

But Snoopgate isn't the sweet Peanuts character that its name envokes in my head. It's a full blown scandal:

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker.

What a miserable jerk. He tries to use great tragedy to grab power and do whatever the hell he wants. And when he's caught he scurries like a cockroach into the dark.

Bush's crocodile tears about national security are so much bullshit. He's worried about covering his ass.

Posted by Carla at December 20, 2005 08:29 AM