Playing politics

It's come to a point where I no longer know what to say in response to the divisive, disingenuous, and dangerous rhetoric of Mr. Bush and his minions. Words simply escape me, as I sit slack-jawed in amazement at an Administration out of control, an Executive Branch that no longer even tries to hide its complete disdain for the checks and balances at the core of American democracy.

The Bush White House makes it clearer each day that it believes the "war" this same Administration fabricated from whole cloth somehow grants the President the authority to do whatever he damn well pleases, regardless of law, in defiance of Congress (which should be ashamed for allowing the Administration to go this far), and shielded from oversight because of trumped up "national security" and "Executive privilege" concerns.

Why? 'Cause George says so.

And when a cry of righteous indignation is raised against Mr. Bush's ever more blatant abuses of power, a cry which is motivated by justifiable bi-partisan concern for civil liberties and respect for the rule of law, the only thing our Despot in Training can do in his defense is reach deep into that well worn GOP bag-o-tricks, and pull out an old accusation that's served him well in the recent past:

The Democrats are playing politics.

Am I just overreacting, or are we really at the mercy of a madman so divorced from reality that he genuinely feels the rules just don't apply to him any more? Does he actually believe that, like a spoiled child, he can get his way through calculated misdirection, and misrepresentation of known facts as if they simply don't exist? The Washington Post reports today:

President Bush accused Democrats yesterday of blocking a full reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act for political reasons, as the White House stepped up an aggressive campaign to defend the president's terrorism-fighting authority.

"For partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up," Bush told reporters, with 19 federal prosecutors by his side. "The enemy has not gone away; they're still there, and I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war."

True to form, Scott McClellan prefaced the President's dog and pony show with one of the most evasive and farcical White House press briefings to date. He then upped the ante, pejoratively claiming:

Senate Democrats are simply doing the bidding of liberal special interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union... Democrats are trying to "appease" the ACLU "because they want to weaken and undermine the Patriot Act."

Scotty even managed to conflate the so-called "war", 9/11, the Patriot Act, illegal domestic surveillance, and liberal obstructionism in one neatly-tied (and completely hypocritical) package:

I think people are concerned about America being attacked again by a deadly and dangerous enemy. We saw what happened on September 11th, and this President is going to do everything within his power to help us connect the dots and disrupt plots and break up terrorist cells. The Patriot Act has helped us in a number of instances break up terrorist cells...

As we engage in this war on terrorism, we must also be mindful of protecting people's civil liberties. And that's why the Congress, as they took up discussion of the Patriot Act and went to conference committee, they took into consideration these issues. And they looked at the Patriot Act.

And in that Act, it provides important safeguards and oversight to address these civil liberty issues. And it took steps to improve upon that in the agreement that was reached, and now Democrats are obstructing and holding that up from being approved.

My favorite part here is the "connect the dots" reference, an obvious allusion to the need for unlimited government power to continue that "data mining" so allegedly essential to national security. Of course, this leads me to an interesting thought: Once upon a time, the Bush Administration was presented with a carefully researched document labeled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In U.S.", which, in addition to its mildly alarming title, notes that "FBI information... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."

Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission found that "George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency were presented in August 2001 with a briefing paper labeled 'Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly' about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui", according to a New York Times article published in April 2004. Now, maybe it's just me, but that seems like pretty specific information, far more focused and direct than the disparate reams of data that would be collected through Mr. Bush's no-holds-barred secret domestic spying program, a program he contends is sanctioned by the very Patriot Act the Administration is so desperate to pass without delay - or revision.

So tell me, if this brain trust in Washington couldn't "connect the dots" about 9/11, even with such literal, targeted intelligence, why should we imagine that the Bushies would do any better with unlimited powers of surveillance? Casting aside the obvious illegality of the eavesdropping policy for a moment, and assuming that the American people were willing to acquiesce to the dismantling of 4th Amendment protections, what proof is there that this Administration has gotten any smarter or more effective at interpreting random chatter than it was in August of 2001?

None that I can see.

It's also interesting, in retrospect, to note that in that same 2004 NYT article, Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the commission, stated the following, unaware (as were we all) that the President's illegal surveillance operation was already being conducted in secret:

It's terribly important that, whatever system you have for the collection of domestic intelligence, that it be done by an agency that has respect for the rule of law. And that's one argument, at least, for keeping domestic intelligence in the F.B.I.

The final irony of Mr. Bush's accusations of Democratic partisanship and obstructionism is that it is the White House itself which promises to pursue its interests by employing political gamesmanship. WaPo observes:

Adopting campaign-style tactics, Bush and his aides plan to accuse Democrats of jeopardizing national security to further their political agenda, a tack that worked well for the White House in the 2002 and 2004 elections.

I'm hoping that this familiar pattern of obfuscation and distraction will not deter Congress and the MSM from addressing the serious issues at hand. We must demand that our elected officials ignore Mr. Bush's attempts to bully or taunt them into compliance, and insist that the Patriot Act be either abolished outright, or significantly altered to protect our civil liberties.

We must also remember that whatever delusions the President harbors of granting himself absolute power, and exalting the Executive to a position unbeholden to the Legislative or Judicial branches of government, he is not above the law. Don't forget that Mr. Bush was hired by the people - and his continued demagoguery and disdain for the tenets of American democracy have clearly made it urgent for the people to revoke his contract.

Well, whaddaya know! Looks like I found some words to say after all...