This is news?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal applications for a special U.S. court to authorize secret surveillance rose sharply after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the panel required changes to the requests at a even greater rate, government documents show.
President George W. Bush acknowledged this month that he had secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone conversations and e-mail of Americans suspected of links to terrorists without approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The domestic-spying order has set off a furious debate over whether the war on terrorism gives Bush a blank check when it comes to civil liberties and whether the president, in fact, broke the law.
Was this reporter for Reuters expecting that applications for surveillance would go down after 9/11? Or even stay the same? I don't know about the rest of you, but I would have been appalled had the number of applications for surveillance done anything other than go up. The reason 9/11 happened is because we didn't have sufficient intelligence to stop it. Increasing the amount of intelligence we were gathering was the logical first step after that.
But what do I know. I'm just one of those crazy right-wingers whose concerned about seeing more of his countrymen immolated in kamikazi airplane attacks.
I suspect that Reuters, with this story, is "manufacturing" news. Meaning that they're reporting something that really isn't news at all and reveals nothing new just for the sake of keeping what they view as a negative story for Bush in the headlines.
One thing that's really beginning to irk me about all this reporting on the NSA matter is the way they keep framing the issue as "spying on Americans." The only thing that has been confirmed is that "people in America" have been spied on. That doesn't not necessarily mean that American citizens were spied on. The only evidence I've heard of to the contrary is some baseless innuendo from anonymous sources.
Not very convincing if you ask me.
You can read more from Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com
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Comments: 1
Absurd. One day the congress will be rid of the cowered sycophants that constitute the Republican party and we will get investigations that will make Watergate look like a picnic. We have no security and nothing the Bush administration has done has changed that. Illegal children and old ladies can cross the Rio Grande unhindered. Why could not legions of terrorists? Most of the extremists are highly educated, many at American universities. Where is all the terror and destruction? A dedicated group of 100 scattered about the nation could terrorize us with great ease. It hasn't happened and the right would like us to believe that it is the lawlessness of Bush that's achieved it. Utter nonsense. Let's see the convictions. Let's see the thwarted plans, the evidence. Let's see the claim, if any, verified OBJECTIVELY. Any dodo can buy 5 gallons of gasoline and cause havoc. Anybody can sabotage the thousands of miles of high tension lines, the tank farms, power plants, water sources, ad infinitum. It hasn't happened because there is no will to make it happen among our "enemies." If it does happen it will be a direct result of the calamity known as Bush's foriegn policy, his rampant disregard for culture, history, and the great plauge of the industrial age: oil.