I read some of the
Bush press conference today and one excerpt struck me. Here it is, in an edited version:
So as I stand here right now I can tell the American people the program is legal, it's designed to protect civil liberties, and it's necessary. Now, my concern has always been that in an attempt to try to pass a law on something that's already legal, we'll show the enemy what we're doing . . . Why tell the enemy what we're doing if the program is necessary to protect us from the enemy?
This is nonsense, that we all know. But, it is very telling. What "enemy" is he talking about?
Basically, Bush is saying that he broke the law in secret becasue he didn't want "the enemy" to find out what we're doing. Well, all we're doing is wiretapping phone calls, at least
General Hayden seems to have said that's all we're doing when he said, "We're going after very specific communications that our professional judgment tells us we have reason to believe are those associated with people who want to kill Americans . That's what we're doing." And if that's all we're doing isn't the cat already out of the bag. Al Qaeda pretty much knows we're going to tap their phone calls, or at least they would assume so. Not to mention that pretty much every American assumed that they were listening in on those conversations. Right? I think I heard something about "chatter" right around the DNC. But I digress.
This raises the question, who is "the enemy" Bush is talking about? Who was he afraid to tip off?
Well, the ACLU of course, and liberals. If the ACLU and like-minded folks such as the dkos community knew what they were doing they would have rallied against it, and the bill would have never passed Congress.
We are the "enemy" George is talking about.
And George isn't alone. "Mainstream" conservatives have said it too. O'reilly thinks the ACLU is an organization that goes out of its way to help Al Qaeda and "are terror allies." Newt Gingrich joined the fun. Michael Savage thinks the ACLU is "one of the most dangerous organizations in the istory of America" and "should be rounded up, arrested for sedition." Rush Limbaugh calimed that liberals "would have sought out bin Laden and tried to make a deal with him" I could go on, but you get the point.
To Bush and his apologists, we are the enemy.
And they get apoplectic when we call them on it? Bullshit.