From today's WaPo editorial on the Bush junta's illegal spying on Americans:
IT DOESN'T much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department. That is why Mr. Bush's response to questions about the program yesterday was so inadequate.
"I'm not going to talk about it," Mr. Bush told reporters at a news conference with departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "It's a very sensitive program. I will tell you that, one, the program is necessary to protect the American people, and it's still necessary because there's still an enemy that wants to do us harm."
. . .
These are important topics for public discussion, and if anyone doubts that they can safely be discussed in public, they need look no further than Mr. Comey's testimony. Instead of doing so, Mr. Bush wants to short-circuit that discussion by invoking the continuing danger of al-Qaeda.
. . .
The administration, it appears from Mr. Comey's testimony, was willing to go forward, against legal advice, with a program that the Justice Department had concluded did not "honor the civil liberties of our people." Nor is it clear that Congress was adequately informed. The president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain. That cannot be allowed to happen.
High crimes and misdemeanors. That's what we impeach presidents for in America: high crimes and misdemeanors. I wish a giant fist would pop out of the sky and bash this tinpot torturer in the mouth every time he tries to misuse the deaths of 3,000 people to justify his high crimes and misdemeanors.
(And Godwin can bite me.)
Not sure where I saw it, but someone's pointing out that the meeting in that hospital room was very unlikely to be secure, and therefore is a violation of the laws about dealing with national security, in and of itself.
ReplyDeleteThey just don't care, though...