Fear, Lies and Wiretaps
IRAN: US shield blunts Israeli military option on Iran — “The decision if and when to act against Iran will be made in the White House, not in the underground headquarters of the (Israeli military command) General Staff.”
GITMO: Falsehoods About Guantanamo — Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
TORTURE: House Committee Squashes Torture Queries — Henry Hyde . . . said Democrats who submitted the resolutions should “at least silently confess to themselves that their actions pose real dangers to our country.”
WIRETAPS: Secret Court’s Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data — Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president’s program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional…
CORRUPTION: DeLay Lands Coveted Appropriations Spot — [Tom DeLay has] claimed a seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is currently investigating an influence-peddling scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff…
FEAR: Bush Says Cooperation Thwarted 2002 Attack — “The terrorists are weakened and fractured, yet they’re still lethal . . . We cannot let the fact that America hasn’t been attacked in 4 1/2 years since September the 11th lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared. They have not.”
SPORTS: F1 travesty: Belgian Grand Prix called off — The withdrawal has been made in order to allow the completion of extensive improvement work to facilities at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. — Red Sox ass-kissery — New York Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon ran this full-page advertisement inside the sports section of The Boston Globe
DEMOCRACY: An image. —
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Stump Lane 
A full blotter today.
I love this thwarted attack story. You can just see the wheels turning, can’t you? Everyone is being very clear about not linking this thwarted attack to the effectiveness of the illegal spying program. Riiight. Just like Cheney never linked bin Laden to Hussein. Yet, somehow, over half of dumbass Americans believe they are linked. Hmmm. They will try the same trick here, with this thwarted attack and the spying.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone would say to the President, “Congratulations! You finally stopped a terrorist attack!”
That DeLay story is pretty depressing. So he gets Cunningham’s seat on Appropriations only because Cunningham was a crook. Well, at least they got another crook in there, and a big crook at that. And NASA too, huh? I bet that George Deutsch is a buddy of Delay’s. Let’s hope they become bunkbunnies together is some correctional facility.
Neil: Most depressing one for me was the ‘torture’ item, with the utter lack of seriousness betrayed by Hyde’s attack.
J.R.: ‘Thwarted an attack’ sounds like they interrupted an attack that was underway. I picture FBI agents and Air Marshalls hog-tying an evildoer on the tarmac moments before the plane took off. But that’s not exactly what happened.
What was uncovered was a plot to attack. In the planning stages before the would-be hijackers had even been recruited. “…the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.” He’s taking credit for someone else’s work! School kids get expelled for that!
During the campaigns, when Karl the R’s are strong on homeland security, the answer is. Where’s Usama? (Wait that’s a question.) ‘We’ will have let go of the nagging fear that these guys got Bin Laden stashed in some black site waiting for the right moment to trot him out, and call our own bluff.
OK, ‘brass balls’ on three and break! One, two, three…