Just now there are many otherwise mild-mannered Americans out there who are seriously pissed by the news of the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance program. But they are also, many of them, unsure if the president's explanations are sound.
The following is, I believe, an excellent email Fwd that may go some way toward convincing otherwise indifferent people of the seriousness of the infringement and of the speciousness of the president's excuses for it. I received this text as an unattributed Fwd and have added to it. I think it has the force to generate some letters to senators.
RE: Disgusted enough? Take a minute to do something.
12/18/05
Yesterday, the President of the United States appeared on national television and told us he had broken the law by using the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans within America, that it was his prerogative as president to break the law as he saw fit, that he would do so again at the time of his choosing, that he as president was above the law, and that the newspaper that broke the story (after spindling it for a year at his request) was irresponsible and had endangered national security.
George W. Bush, by his own admission, has violated the Constitution he swore under oath to preserve and defend. He must be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office. To advocate a lesser course of action is un-American. To accept the dubious justifications spawned by the terrorist threat is shameful, cowardly, unpatriotic. The Bush Administration has used the excuse of terrorist threat to erode civil liberties it evidently sees as too extensive in America. The law matters little to Bush policymakers, and it is time they paid.
This administration has already seriously damaged our good reputation in the international community, and now it is proving itself a grave threat to our national identity and the freedoms which are, or ought to be, the hallmarks of American society.
Bush and Cheney cannot be trusted to steer this country wisely. They have arrogantly disregarded American law and must be impeached.
Find your representatives at the site below. Write a brief letter explaining that you expect them to defend American civil liberties law by pushing for the sternest action possible against this arrogant administration.
http://www.senate.gov/
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P.S.--In his press conference yesterday, President Bush defended his 2002 establishment of warrantless surveillance as follows:
"[The] people responsible for helping us protect and defend came forth with the current program, because it enables us to move faster and quicker. And that's important. We've got to be fast on our feet, quick to detect and prevent. . . . . [Obtaining warrants from the FISA court] is for long-term monitoring. What is needed in order to protect the American people is the ability to move quickly to detect."
In short, the president says he set up his program of warrantless surveillance because it is sometimes impossible to obtain a warrant in time to spy on a particular threat. The president must be able to order surveillance on his own, without a warrant, because of the need, in certain cases, for fast action.
This is a bald-faced lie. It is a lie because, as both the president and his legal advisors know, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows him to order surveillance on a target first, and then obtain a warrant after the fact. In short, the law already allows the president of the United States to order surveillance at the drop of a hat--without the need for any warrant before surveillance begins.
Why, then, one wonders, did the administration decide to establish a program intended to bypass this law? Since the need for prompt action against terrorists is obviously not the real reason, what IS the reason?
There are only two logical answers:
1) The administration sought to set up a mechanism for spying on Americans that would have no external oversight whatsoever. Under Bush's program, the administration would have its own in-house surveillance service, under which anyone could be watched as if they constituted a national threat. This could easily include anti-war activists, journalists investigating delicate stories, overzealous whistleblowers, etc. It could include these people because, after all, there is no oversight except the president and his minions.
2) The administration set up the program because it knew ahead of time that the FISA court would not approve spying on the kind of people they wanted to spy on: in short, American citizens who didn't really pose a TERRORIST threat, but who perhaps posed a POLITICAL threat to the administration. Note that in past uses of the FISA court the records show that while thousands of requests for warrants were made, only four or five times did the court refuse to grant a warrant. The court, in other words, is not exactly stringent in its oversight role. Why then should the Bush Administration worry about the need to get a warrant? As long as the target was even FEASIBLY a security threat, the FISA court could be expected to grant a warrant promptly. There must be something else that was worrying them.
These two are the only logical reasons for the establishment of warrantless surveillance. The Bush Administration wanted a program that would allow it to conduct spying on Americans with no oversight whatsoever. Is it American to allow any president, under any circumstance, such a power? It is not.
Bush's 2002 order to establish this program constitutes a serious misuse of executive authority and a gross infringement on American civil liberties. Given that the need for prompt action in spying on terrorists is obviously NOT the reason this program was set up, what other reasons other than the two cited above might there be?
As Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, has put it, the establishment of this program "ought to send a chill down the spine of every American."
The Bush Administration has broken American law, undermined the Constitution, and broken the trust between itself and the American people. The patriotic course of action is to begin impeachment proceedings as promptly as possible. Contact your representatives and let them know that you expect them to fight this corrupt administration.
E.M.
The Manhattan Reichstag Review