You Have No Life II 0
You belong to George:
Citing intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the newspaper said the investigations, part of an expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering, also included CIA issuance of what are called national security letters to get access to financial records from U.S. companies.
And from all this, there has not yet been one–one–successful prosecution on United States shores of anyone for anything connected with terrorism since the initial World Trade Center bombing, which did not occur, was not investigated, and was not prosecuted under the Current Federal Administration. And note that the convictions that resulted in that case resulted without attempts to abrogate anyone’s civil liberties.
So what’s it all about?
Tyranny. Just because they want to.
Why is Washington still holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, long after years of interrogation and abuse have established that few, if any, of them are the deadly terrorists they have been held out to be?
And why is President Bush still issuing grandiose and provocative signing statements, the latest of which claims that the executive branch has the power to open mail when it sees fit?
I once believed that the common thread here is presidential blindness — an extreme executive-branch myopia that leads the chief executive to believe that these futile measures are integral to combating terrorism; a self-delusion that precludes Bush and his advisers from recognizing that Padilla is a chump and Guantanamo Bay is just a holding pen for a jumble of innocent or half-guilty wretches.
But it has finally become clear that the goal of these efforts isn’t to win the war against terrorism; indeed, nothing about Padilla, Guantanamo Bay or signing statements moves the country an inch closer to eradicating terrorism. The object is a larger one: expanding executive power, for its own sake.
What part of “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” are they so incapable of understandiing?
And how can members of the Current Federal Administration sleep at night?
