A little fact checking

January 24, 2006

Trying to fact check every speech Bush delivers is too daunting a task for a humble blogger — a typical event includes far too much mendacity to bother. But since yesterday’s speech was supposed to be the president’s latest comprehensive defense of his warrantless-search program, it’s probably worth taking a moment to document the more obvious problems.

Oddly enough, for a White House intent on launching a “campaign” on the NSA program, Bush didn’t have much to say. In all, he only devoted about 500 words to the issue yesterday, and they came at the end of his prepared remarks, presented almost as an afterthought. Nevertheless, if this was the president’s best pitch, he has a problem.

* “I repeat to you, even though you hear words, ‘domestic spying,’ these are not phone calls within the United States.” — According to officials at the NSA, some of the calls were purely domestic and the agency sometimes has technical difficulties knowing where the callers are located.

* “And if [an al Qaeda affiliate is] making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.” — Of course we do. Get a warrant, allow for some oversight, and this isn’t an issue.

* “I’m mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process.” — All of the lawyers that reviewed the process were the administration’s own attorneys. The checks were supposed to come from the judiciary, not the administration approving of its own efforts. For that matter, Department of Justice officials including John Ashcroft, James Comey, and Robert Mueller all balked at the programs legal foundations, but Bush went ahead with it anyway.

* “We briefed members of the United States Congress, one of whom was Senator Pat Roberts, about this program.” — Those would be the same briefings the non-partisan Congressional Research Service found to be illegal. For that matter, these are also the same briefings in which lawmakers’ concerns were ignored. White House spin notwithstanding, there was no oversight, and the “briefings” were little more than cursory, incomplete notifications to a handful lawmakers whose concerns were rendered irrelevant.

* “Predecessors of mine have used that same constitutional authority.” — No, they haven’t.

Just another day in Bushville….

Wouldn’t it be nice if CNN or some other major news source did this kind of fact checking for the public? Too much to ask for?

  • What the hell is going on in this country? The president routinely and frequently lies about his actions, actions which demonstrate utter disregard for the rule of law and for the US Constitution, and conservatives are still stuck on the flag burning issue.

  • “Predecessors of mine have used that same constitutional authority”

    Here we go….back to Clinton. Clinton was the most reprehensible President this nation has ever seen, according to most conservatives, yet they never fail to point to him as precedent when they are trying to justify their own actions. They can’t have their cake and hate it too.

    “And if [an al Qaeda affiliate is] making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.”

    It seems like to me, why the hell aren’t we arresting an al Qaeda affiliated person in this country?? Our government has no problem detaining others suspected of being affiliated with al-Qaeda (e.g. Padilla), so why not arrest them all. Especially if they are IN the United States?

  • I’m curious about the unnamed FBI agents who complained about “calls to Pizza Hut”. I mean, really, Pizza Hut doesn’t even deliver out in the rural area I live in. I’m pretty sure they don’t deliver internationally. The implication, of course, is that both ends of the call were inside the US. Even without references to Pizza Hut, it is tough to take the administration’s insistence that one end of the call is international.

  • I’ve come to wonder why it was that John Ashcroft left this administration. When he was Secretary of Justice, he seemed a horribly scary person to have in charge of our liberties. Now, one begins to wonder!

    Could you imagine the conversation though:

    Rove: “John, thanks for dropping by today.”

    Ashcroft: “Well, Karl, you know I always have time for you.”

    Rove: “So, John, all better now? Feeling okay after your stint in the Hospital?”

    Ashcroft: “Sure Karl, I’m fit and ready to get back on the horse.”

    Rove: “Well, about that John. You know, while you were in bed, we had a bit of difficulty with your deputy. He was giving Alberto (Gonzales, White House Counsel at the time) grief about that warrantless wiretapping (General) Hayden is conducting over at NSA. This is an important program for us, we don’t want to be seen as falling down on the job again when Al Queda hits us. We want to be able to say we listened into every possible conversation to catch these guys even though we just give them student visas to trapse into country.”

    Ashcroft: “Yah, well Karl, I’m sure we could go to Pat (Roberts, Chairman of the Senate committee on Intelligence) and get FISA modified to make it possible to warrant this stuff. I mean, guys up in Congress are writing amendments to modify FISA right now. We can slip some language in that would cover Hayden’s program without having to raise any kind of a fuss.”

    Rove: “Maybe John, but you got to understand Dick’s (Cheney) idea on this. He’s really pissed with FISA itself. He wants to get back to the President having the inherent authority to collect foreign intelligence and prosecute the war and all those constitutional things the President is supposed to be able to do as commander in chief under article II.”

    Ashcroft: “Common Karl, the 4th amendment was written after article II. It restricts the president. I mean, the founding fathers had just fought a war against an all powerful executive who conducted warrantless and unreasonable searches. It’s pretty clear from the amendment and the (Supreme) court rulings that ‘Reasonable’ searches are ‘Warranted’ searches. You know, ones where we go to an Article III court and show probable cause?”

    Rove: “That’s not what Alberto and the lawyers in the Counsel’s office are telling us!”

    Ashcroft: “You mean the same guys who came up with the torture memos? You’re taking their advice? If you think Alberto is so great why don’t you make him Secretary of Justice?”

    Rove: “Ah, Yah. That’s sort of what we were thinking, John.”

  • Here’s the biggest fact-checking failure of all: The President’s descriptions of what these programs are all about are simply preposterous. If the NSA is truly listening in on any calls by any Al Qaida affiliates, or reading any Al Qaida email, they would get a FISA warrant — either before or after the fact. They’re listening to and reading EVERYTHING in hopes that their “Jihad filters” will shake something out.

    If there’s any evidence that these programs have *ever* uncovered anything of value to the intelligence people, then why not share that with a couple of congressional leaders of both parties who could then vouch for the truth of it to the rest of us? Oh, I keep forgetting, they’re afraid to tell any Democrat anything, since Dems are all AQ affiliates themselves.

  • The mere fact that anyone feels out of necessity that they should fact check any of Bush’s speeches highlights the way a black eye does, how far we as a nation have fallen. Does anyone else here think that Harry Truman has been rolling in his grave lately? Truman, a president who lived and breathed the very ideals our current “leader” claims to embody, prided himself and his administration on transparency, accountability, and no b.s. attitude. He simply must be beside his posthumous self knowing that such a treacherous, self (and crony) serving, patently dishonest war pig now occupies the office of what was the pinnacle of Truman’s’ political career. Bottom line? Bush treats his job like he’s the C.E.O. and Chief Salesman of the Bushco used car lot, not the leader of a nation. Under his “leadership” we Americans are forced to cling to the straws that once wove together the fabric of global, economic and diplomatic leadership for the rest of the free world. One only hopes that we will again someday restore the balance of power our country was built upon and around, but it clearly won’t be under the near totalitarian flag flying over the Capitol today.

  • (cut from the post above) but it clearly won’t be under the near totalitarian flag flying over the Capitol today.

  • “– something that you’ve been reading about in the news lately. It’s what I would call a terrorist surveillance program.”

    This coming from the most powerful man in the free world. If it only monitors terrorists, then you must know they are terrorists before you monitor them. You must be basing this knowledge on some sort of intelligence. Why then can’t you present that to FISA?

  • What I can’t reconcile is that if bush boy knows theses calls are coming from AQ, why not trace the calls to their origin? It wouldn’t be the first time a cell phone was globally positioned.

    Phones work the same way all over the world. If only the NSA could recruit Jack Bauer from CTU. They get all the best agents!

  • “This is a — I repeat to you, even though you hear words, “domestic spying,” these are not phone calls within the United States. It’s a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States.” – George W. Bush Today

    “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” – George W. Bush in 2004

  • I sure hope someone’s tracking early runups in stock prices and early dumps of largre bundles of stock, or purchases of put options, by members of the intelligence agencies and their political handlers.

    I mean, if these people aren’t smart enough to get rich, do we want them on as part of this country’s Executive Branch?

    To get rich is glorious. I think George Washington said that.

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