As noted here at Think Progress last night, even if the Bush Administration now argues that it was doing this as part of a preemptive war on terror (or something like that, which no doubt we will be hearing, no later than tomorrow morning), it kind of failed, didn't it? Or perhaps had Qwest only complied September 11 might never have happened? Will we hear variations on either or both of these arguments? I believe it is entirely possible!
As usual, Glenn Greenwald takes the bald fact of Washington duplicity and drives home a central point, and in the process creates the framework for a new narrative structure for critics of the Bush Administration:
[L]eave to the side that these telecoms did not merely allow warrantless surveillance on their customers in the hectic and "confused" days or weeks after 9/11, but for years. Further leave to the side the fact that, as Hiatt's own newspaper just reported yesterday, the desire for warrantless eavesdropping capabilities seemed to be on the Bush agenda well before 9/11.
. . . Hiatt's claim on behalf of the telecoms that they broke the law for "patriotic" reasons is so frivolous as to insult the intelligence of his readers, but -- more importantly -- it is also completely irrelevant.
There is no such thing as a "patriotism exception" to the laws that we pass. It is not a defense to illegal behavior to say that one violated the law for "patriotic" reasons. That was Oliver North's defense to Congress when he proudly admitted breaking multiple federal laws. And it is the same "defense" that people like North have been making to justify Bush's violations of our surveillance laws -- what we call "felonies" -- in spying on Americans without warrants.
Let's sum up, shall we? The telecoms are seeking immunity from lawsuits stemming from lawbreaking that was initiated seven months before the attacks on New York and Washington. The Administration excuse has always been that they were pursuing this - illegal wiretapping of American citizens - in pursuit of the War on Terror. So, either they were lying, or the War on Terror began before September 11, 2001. If the latter is the case, then having the wiretaps didn't do much to prevent the attacks, did they? Indeed, seeing as Qwest was probably the only major telecom not to hand over information for wiretapping, all those illegal wiretaps didn't do a whole lot to prevent it one way or another, regardless of the arguments involved here.
As tristero notes here at Hullabaloo:
If this country still had a working system of laws and a government with at least some checks and balances left in place, it would be a huge scandal. . .
Of course, we don't have the former. It might be nice, however, if we could gin up enough outrage to create the latter. Obviously, we might get in to an argument over which scandal we need to deal with first. . .
UPDATE: I don't normally read Frank Rich, because he seems to lose any semblance of balance, or coherence, when he writes about Al Gore. On the other hand, the righteous outrage he displays in today's column is a beautiful thing (h/t, Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo):
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.
--snip--
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
--snip--
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.
--snip--
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Harsh words. Implicating all of us in this travesty upsets our sense of ourselves as proper moral agents. Alas, Rich is correct - we are, indeed, guilty, and we can never do enough to try to clean up our fetid souls until this entire mess is ended.
Lest anyone think there is no Christian connection here, allow me to offer the opening lines of a post from a blog I found thanks to Blogrush:
The first verse of Leviticus 5 opens a big can of worms as we continue the instructions for the sin offering:
“If a person sins because he does not speak up when he hears a public charge to testify regarding something he has seen or learned about, he will be held responsible.”
Inaction is sin.
Enough said.
