An Easy Call: Eugene Robinson-Bush Hater

An Easy Call: Lying

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, May 12, 2006; Page A21

At least now we know that the Bush administration's name for spying on Americans without first seeking court approval -- the "terrorist surveillance program" -- isn't an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. It's just a bald-faced lie.

Oh, and at least now the Senate will have a few questions to ask Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the man George W. Bush just named to head the CIA, at his confirmation hearings.

While Hayden was running the super-secret National Security Agency, according to a report yesterday in USA Today, the NSA began collecting comprehensive records of telephone calls made by "tens of millions of Americans." If your service is provided by AT&T, Verizon or BellSouth, according to the newspaper, this means your phone calls -- all the calls you've made since late 2001. Of the major phone companies, only Qwest reportedly declined to cooperate.

The allegation, which the president refused to confirm or deny, is not that the spooks are actually listening in as you call home to check on the kids or talk to the bank about refinancing your mortgage. Rather, the idea is to be able to look at a given phone number -- yours, let's say -- and see all the other numbers that you called or that called you over a given period.

No names are attached to the numbers. But a snoopy civilian with Internet access can match a name with a phone number, so imagine what the government can do.

You'll recall that when it was revealed last year that the NSA was eavesdropping on phone calls and reading e-mails without first going to court for a warrant, the president said his "terrorist surveillance program" targeted international communications in which at least one party was overseas, and then only when at least one party was suspected of some terrorist involvement. Thus no one but terrorists had anything to worry about.

Not remotely true, it turns out, unless tens of millions of Americans are members of al-Qaeda sleeper cells -- evildoers who cleverly disguise their relentless plotting as sales calls, gossip sessions and votes for Elliott on "American Idol." (One implication, by the way, is that the NSA is able to know who got voted off "Idol" before Ryan Seacrest does.)

Step back for a moment. There's an understandable tendency, with this administration, to succumb to a kind of "outrage fatigue." Pre-cooked intelligence on Iraq, secret CIA prisons, Abu Ghraib -- the accretion is numbing, and it's easy just to say "there they go again" and count the months until the Decider heads home to Texas for good. Bush and his people have tried to turn flouting the law into a virtue if it's a law they find inconvenient. They've tried to radically change our concept of privacy. We already knew the NSA was somehow monitoring phone calls, so what's the big deal?

The big deal is that now we know that the administration -- I'll say "apparently," although if the report were untrue I think the president would have denied it -- is keeping track of the phone calls of millions of citizens who have nothing at all to do with terrorism. Bush has tried to convince us that the overwhelming majority of Americans are not affected by domestic surveillance, but now we know that the opposite is true: The overwhelming majority of us are.

What's mind-numbing here is the continuous spewing of lies and half truths from people like yourself Eugene.

"Pre-cooked intelligence on Iraq, secret CIA prisons, Abu Ghraib"

You are the purveyor of lies here sir. You mention Abu Ghraib as if it was something planned and intentionally carried out by the Bush Administration. Of course you never say that, just slyly (you're deluding yourself if you actually believe your being clever) imply it to be so. "Pre-cooked intelligence?" Pure fabricated allegation. The only thing "pre-cooked" here is your editorial opinion, laced as it is with your own personal hatred of the President. "Secret CIA prisons?" Even the European Union investigators have failed to prove their existence or that the claimed flights have ever occurred. What we are left with is the usual pure paranoiac drivel that is so commonly proferred by individuals like yourself as journalism.

"Bush has tried to convince us that the overwhelming majority of Americans are not affected by domestic surveillance, but now we know that the opposite is true: The overwhelming majority of us are."

Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to those of us who are less wise than you, exactly how were you "affected" by this program? Unless you have been discussing your columns with members of al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization, you are completely unaffected by this program.

You are the lowest form of hate-monger posing as a "journalist" and working for a yellow rag posing as a "newspaper."

"Facts? Facts? Don't need no stinkin' facts!"

Full Story: Eugene says: "I Hate George Bush!"...again

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