Illegal Spying on Americans Is Acceptable to Congress

May 11, 2006

Months ago, a government employee revealed Bush's secret domestic spy program which used illegal wiretaps against Americans. In response, Bush demanded an investigation to find and punish that patriot and promised Americans that only terrorist related calls from outside America to individuals in the U.S. were being monitored.  It sounded reasonable to some, but caused nagging doubts in most patriotic Americans. They reasoned, if a few could be monitored then how many more could or would be. How would we know?

It turns out those nagging doubts and escalating fears were valid. It appears a massive illegal domestic spying program has been in place since 911 and Bush knew about it from the start. And it was developed and successfully operated by Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who was recently nominated by Bush to lead the CIA.

On May 11, 2006 the Bush administration was again publically outed for spying on Americans and diligently maintaining a massive database of tens of millions of Americans and their phone calls. It seems Verizon, AT&T and Bell South conspired with the government to collect customer phone usage information without a warrant. Earlier in the year, Bush said this kind of thing wasn’t being done, he obviously lied.

In response to the new information, Bush said:

“We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,”

“Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates."

                                                                                                   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12734870/

Keeping a detailed database of millions of Americans and their phone calls shows these statements are lies. It is ridiculous to believe that tens of millions of Americans have terrorist links.

It is not surprising that Bush and his people are doing this. Months ago, Bush said he was secretly spying and was not going to stop. His arrogant attitude messaged, “So there! And what are you going to do about it?”

Not much.  Congress has failed to confront the problem openly and directly and in the meantime, our civil liberties have been trampled.

It is not that Bush's domestic spying has gotten worse; we just know more about it.  And what we now know shows an arrogant White House relentlessly continuing to ignore Constitutional protections and U.S. laws. It shows an unprecedented disregard for our democracy.

Unfortunately it also shows a Republican Congress, by its inaction, siding with Bush and plainly saying to us that an unlawful domestic spying is okay with them.