The Washington Post editorial board has been pretty consistent in its support of Bush when it comes to terrorism and Iraq, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the WaPo run a much-needed editorial taking the White House to task for its absurd partisan attacks stemming from the controversy on warrantless searches.
The Bush administration’s distortion, for political purposes, of the Democratic position on warrantless surveillance is loathsome. Despite the best efforts of Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, to make it seem otherwise, Democrats are not opposed to vigorous, effective surveillance that could uncover terrorist activity. Nor are the concerns that they are expressing unique to their party. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) have expressed legal doubts about the surveillance program. Do they, too, have a “pre-9/11 worldview,” as Mr. Rove said of the Democrats?
Believing there should be constraints on unchecked executive power is not the same as being weak-kneed about the war against terrorism. Critics are suggesting that President Bush should have gone through normal procedures for conducting such surveillance or asked Congress to provide clear legal authority for the National Security Agency activity. They are not contending that such surveillance shouldn’t be conducted at all.
No leading Democrat has argued for barring this kind of potentially useful technique. But you wouldn’t know that to listen to the GOP spin.
Hallelujah. The debate over the NSA’s domestic surveillance program has taken a few predictable turns, including bizarre and frequently contradictory legal defenses for a scheme that quite obviously circumvents the law. But the constant refrain that Republicans want to spy on the bad guys and the Dems don’t is despicable. It’s yet another reminder of a trend that we’ve all seen far too often — in a jam, the Bush machine won’t rely on facts or reason; they’ll smear as viciously as they can. Kudos to the Post for saying so.
Now, if only the rest of the media establishment were as diligent.
Numerous media outlets repeated without challenge White House senior adviser Karl Rove’s defense of President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, in which Rove falsely claimed that “some important Democrats clearly disagree” with the proposition that “if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why.” In fact, no leading Democrat has said that it is not in our interest to monitor Al Qaeda’s communications. […]
[T]he Democratic objections to the wiretapping program are directed at the administration’s apparent flouting of the legal requirements governing such surveillance. Nonetheless, numerous media outlets have repeated Rove’s claim without challenge.
Maybe the WaPo editorial will help remind them.
For what it’s worth, at least one reporter raised this issue to Scott McClellan earlier this week.
Q: You don’t think it’s a false attack to say that Democrats are saying that we don’t want to monitor al Qaeda calls? That’s not exactly an accurate statement.
McClellan: Democrats are attacking this very vital tool in false ways.
I think the word I’m looking for here is chutzpah.