Article: It is always the same.

FISA is being debated and big bro 43 drags out some terrifying report and accuses the Democrats of being in league with bin laden, or letting terrorists make phone calls with each other--with one being on your street corner and the other with bin laden, or with al-qaida in Iraq, or those "who are against us".
None of it has to make sense--it just has to scare the apathetic 10 or 20% who don't react to anything except visceral fear mongering.

The article "New Security Strategy Emphasizes Disaster Preparedness" at
click here
notes that Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser wants to keep her job even mouthing such drivel as "Homeland security both as a
policy matter and as a concept didn't exist prior to 9/11 and prior to . . . President Bush assuming office."

W has had 6 years of running around fear and war mongering with nothing accomplished "Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said however that the document "provides little guidance for the deficiencies already taxing our homeland security capacity, while at the same time, it attempts to define successes . . . which have not yet been realized."
Several security analysts praised the document for attempting to put such policies on more solid footing. But they also questioned its timing and long passages defending the pet initiatives of a dwindling administration, instead of reconciling security directives and plans issued over the past six years.
"It reads more like a legacy document than a forward-leaning strategy," said Frank J. Cilluffo, a former Bush adviser now head of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute. "To some extent, it was a missed opportunity," he said.
David W. Heyman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies homeland security program, noted that the 208,000-worker Department of Homeland Security remains short of key managers and its Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson recently announced his resignation.
"It's a surprising time . . . to come up with a new strategy," Heyman said. "My concern is that, even if this is a better or best strategy, without the effective leadership, human resources, processes and operations to support it, they are not going to set down roots."

W has admitted he has failed why else would he feel the need "to come up with a new strategy"?

You must realize that 43 is the ultimate one trick pony! Whenever he gets a chance to he spouts propaganda aimed at the limited attention span and intellect of our blessed common masses which proclaims that only W can protect us from the vaguely defined enemies we have. This report "attempts to define successes . . . which have not yet been realized"-in other words illuminates W's failures as our protector, but red staters are kind of dense. When W talks they know he's planning on protecting them, if only he could-and he's the only who has a chance to save them from whatever.

He got them scared, and then, while they were diverted, he is trying to jam down Congress' throat more legislation which is aimed at dismantling our civil rights!

The article "White House Fights Democratic Changes to Surveillance Act" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101001047.html
states "President Bush and other Republicans stepped up their attacks on Democratic legislation that would require more oversight of surveillance within U.S. borders that is directed at foreign targets, escalating a partisan battle
over the boundaries of U.S. spying.
In separate votes along party lines, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees approved bills that would require the government to get approval from a special intelligence court for blanket surveillance of targets overseas.
Supporters say the legislation is needed to safeguard the rights of innocent U.S. citizens who may be caught up in such surveillance."

He doesn't want his cronies in the telecommunication industry to pay for their crimes and he wants all of the "unitary executive" power that he can possibly latch onto. Why--what has he accomplished?

"It is unclear whether Democrats could muster the votes to survive a presidential veto. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a member of the House intelligence panel, accused Bush of playing "the fear card . . . to stampede Congress."
"Time for a deep breath, Mr. President," Harman said. "The point is not whether to conduct surveillance but to do it right, without throwing out the Fourth Amendment," which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Democrats will compromise as "Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) has signaled that Democrats may be willing to negotiate on the immunity issue if the administration tells Congress more about the nature of, and legal justification for, its post-9/11 surveillance activities."

W doesn't compromise. That might work-which might be against W's best interests' and he wants to impale Democrats with being pre-9/11 thinkers at every chance he can get.

The trouble with this is that W's team of crackerjack intelligence agents dropped the ball!

The article "'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Oct. 9" at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21221583/
states "Our fifth story on the "Countdown," the administration compromised a back-door channel into Islamic web sites so it could look like a bunch of big men on FOX News channel. It reviewed a route to an unreleased Osama bin Laden video. Of course, not long after FOX News found out, so did al Qaeda. Add the name SITE intelligence group, S-I-T-E, to the long list of counterterror assets sacrificed to Bush P.R. efforts. It's the Valerie Plame Wilson list, if you will.
The founder of the small privately run intelligence firm telling the "Washington Post" it gave two senior White House officials an advanced copy of the last, the latest, Osama bin Laden tape on the condition the administration would keep it secret until al Qaeda released the tape itself. The logic there impeccable not to give al Qaeda a hint that any terror group had a pipeline into one of its web homes.
But within hours, someone in the government had leaked the video and the transcript to FOX News. Apparently, even telling FOX about the SITE Intelligence Group's name. The sensitive data was leaked to other news organizations. And that, says the SITE group, tipped off al Qaeda to the security breach that allowed SITE to get the advanced copy of the tape in the first place. Thanks to that, the company adds, quote, "techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless."

How does W go around castigating Democrats regarding FISA and then his boys can't follow up on bin laden. Isn't he the one W would "catch dead or alive"?

Olbermann calmly analyzed the video clips and came to the conclusion that "To recap, in the space of two minutes, Ms. Perino's story, the White House not asking to have the bin Laden tape solely reviewed by the White House, and claims that the White House did in fact review it. Ms. Perino further saying Fred Fielding and Joel Bagnell turned the tape over to the National Counterterrorism Center themselves. That story morphing into Mr. Fielding asked the SITE Institute to contact the NCTC directly. That second version of the story morphing into I'm going to have to get into the specifics of who Mr. Fielding spoke with or didn't."

Olbermann and his guest Dana Milbank discussed whether there should be a special investigator appointed for this amazingly incompetent act and then Olbermann says "At the White House this morning, Francis Townsend, who is assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and appears on camera frequently everywhere, said the White House has not conducted the an investigation of this information exchange. Let's call it that. But she expected that the director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, would do so and, quote, "it would be a typical leak investigation."

Milbank says "No one is talking, I believe, even on the Democratic side about a special prosecutor just yet in this. But what's interesting is it would not be typical for the DNI, for intelligence community to do this investigation.
Typically what's happened is they make a report to the justice department which does this sort of investigation. So, we should be watching to see if that is, indeed, the process it takes here.

Then Olbermann asked his next guest, MSNBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann about this latest mess and how it blew a big chance to mess with bin laden who says "It was a very unusual edge what they had gotten. About over the last approximate year, there have been a number of us that have managed to snake various loopholes into al Qaeda's distribution system. We have been able to get advanced copies of al Qaeda videos before they are coming out.
Now, it happens to different degrees and some people use different loopholes.
It happened that the SITE Institute had it secured for itself was remark capably ingenious and quite unusual. And I would be shocked to hear that anyone in the U.S. government has an equivalent on their own without the assistance of SITE....As far as what the White House did in this case, I have got to tell you, I was getting request from this video from U.S. law enforcement on that day. So, apparently, whoever was at the White House or whoever was at the DNI who was supposed to be in charge of getting this video out, was not doing a very good job because it didn't get out to U.S. Law enforcement immediately?
So, I mean, this is just the reality of things is that FOX News had this transcript and had this video, in some cases, before FBI agents did."

How does FOX get this before the FBI? How do we mildly say to ourselves that this is just another scam, W lying again-- just what happens in this current inept regime! Kohlmann concludes "These loopholes are incredibly difficult to secure. When they disappear it really is a sad thing to see them go. I don't know that permanent damage was done but any damage really is regrettable because these kind of opportunities are few and far between. It really, it takes ingenuity to find these loopholes. It's not so easy. So to squander them for any reason, except for life or death, is something that should not be done. It's irrelevant whether the intelligence was collected by SITE or U.S. Intelligence agency, you don't squander intelligence needlessly.
Here you put their intelligence-gathering methods-and I should say that intelligence gathering methods of many private intelligence research institutions, at risk by doing this and, thus, consequently, U.S. government intelligence....There does seem to be unfortunate tendency that when there are victories in the war on terrorism or a speech by Osama bin Laden or something really, you know, that generates fear, there seems to be a tendency to focus on that, rather than focusing on the kind of more nuanced here is al Qaeda, here is what they are planning, here is what they have said.
We don't want to resort to hysteria. And the last thing we want to do is spread al Qaeda's message the way that they want us to which is spreading a transcript to the American people. There was nothing in this bin Laden video that had any value that Americans needed to read it then and there. So, to help distribute it to Americans, you are just helping al Qaeda in their mission."

Why do we have experts continually saying that W is helping the terrorists and casually accusing him of hypocrisy?

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Larry Butler, a deputy assistant secretary of state and the State Department witness: "Do you believe that the government of Iraq currently has the political will or the capability to root out corruption within its government?"
"Questions which go to the broad nature of our bilateral relationship with Iraq are best answered in a classified setting," Butler responded.
Waxman tried several more times, but Butler calmly insisted that such a discussion could take place only in a classified briefing.
Waxman asked: "Why can you talk about the positive things and not the negative things? Shouldn't we have the whole picture?"
Mr. Chairman, I would be very pleased to answer those questions in an appropriate setting," Butler responded, eliciting laughter in the hearing room.
"An appropriate setting for positive things is a congressional hearing, but to say anything negative has to be behind closed doors?" Waxman asked.
"This goes to the very heart of diplomatic relations and national security," Butler said. "This is our ability to . . ." Waxman cut Butler off in mid-sentence. "It goes to the heart of propaganda," he said."

What happened to the US? How did we get so blase' about lies and the dismantling of our civil rights that the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform can accuse a W official in the manner of "It goes to the heart of propaganda" and no one is surprised-or willing to attack the injustice?

It is always the same. With the GOP policies don't matter. The only thing that matters is that the top 1% get theirs, which is more than their fair share. W will tell you any lie he needs to make sure that his cronies are feeding at the trough-- US soldiers and innocent Iraqis be damned. All power to the military-industrial complex!