Many other fine Kossacks have written extensively about the actions of Michael Hayden to be head of the CIA.
A military general took over the NSA and broke that agency's charter by spying on Americans.
In the name of 'national security' which no less a monster than Hermann Goering said would pacify all who cried out for liberty, Hayden carried out an unconstitutional and criminal order for spying, collecting phone data, and basically eradicating the privacy and liberty of Americans.
This scares me. It ought to scare you.
A few excerpts from the press and web I'd like to share:
From The Detroit Free Press:
A USA Today report last week about NSA efforts to analyze the call records of millions of Americans added new grist to the discussion and prompted the administration to reverse course after five months and tell the intelligence committees more about the terror-monitoring work on Wednesday.
Hayden declined to openly discuss the reports, saying he would talk only about the part of the program the president had confirmed.
"Is that the whole program?" asked Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
"I'm not at liberty to talk about that in open session," replied Hayden, currently the nation's No. 2 intelligence official. A closed-door session was planned Thursday evening.
So, it appears we cannot ask questions and get answers about the extent to which we have been spied on without the iron door being slammed in our face.
We're getting spied on.
We're getting our privacy and liberty decimated.
And we can't ask questions about it.
There's a word for this.
Fascism.
And that scares the dookey out of me.
I haven't been asleep since 2000, only to be startled awake by this one particular egregious action by the Bush administration. On the contrary, I've been horrified since November 2000 and stayed that way.
This nomination, however, seems like nothing so much as the instutionalization of a Gestapo-like spying policy that takes our final vestigial hopes of privacy and shreds them.
This is not the America my father fought in WWII (PTO) for.
This is the America I can't really understand anymore, and I feel I'm fighting for a ghost.
From Gov. Dean, a way to add your voice to those crying out for relief from the increasingly Gestapo-like administration:
After yesterday's hearings, it's obvious that Michael Hayden's involvement in the NSA's domestic spying program disqualifies him from heading the CIA. His answers to questions from Congress and from the press have been evasive at best and downright false at worst. The Bush administration's chronic pattern of misleading the American people about the full extent of its domestic spying activities was on full display yesterday, and the American people deserve better.
When the Senators meet to decide on Hayden's confirmation, they must hear the voices of their constituents. We want to deliver the voices of 100,000 Americans who oppose this nomination. Add your name now...
http://www.democrats.org/...
With your voice, we all can be heard.
Be heard. Speak out now.
At a minimum, take a second and put your name on Dean's petition.
Write to your Senators.
Write letters to the editor.
Do it now. Use the words 'fascism, gestapo, criminal, civil liberties, privacy, constitution.' Those words and the ideas they represent are the foundation of our freedoms, and they are at risk, right now.
Be scared. But don't be paralyzed. Please act.
Thanks.
