C'mon -- none of this matters. Reverend Wright!!!

Kevin wrote: "Again: this deserves some followup from the press."

Why? How would that help the rich get richer and the powerful more powerful? How would it help to ensure that John McCain is installed as the next president to continue the Cheney/Bush policies of huge tax cuts for the ultra-rich corporate elite, and deregulation of media ownership so a few giant corporations can gobble up more and more newspapers, networks, and TV and radio stations? How would it advance the cause of militaristic corporate imperialism and wars for control of the world's oil supplies?

In other words, how would it accomplish the mission of "the press" in America?

I believe that Reverend Wright and Barack Obama made the call after visiting an opium den in Afghanistan. They then aborted babies by hitting pregnant Christian mothers with bibles wrapped in flaming American flags.

Also, I think this is a pretty big deal. I guess I was fooled like some other people (although maybe no one in the blogosphere) that Mukasey would be insane, but a more moderate insane. Not so. He seems worse than Gonzales in that he is both insane AND a competent manipulator of the government.

So the pressing question of the day is whether BombIranForChrist has become a Normie clone, or if he was going for a good parody.

Glenn Greenwald has a followup today on Attorney General Michael Mukasey's claim that the old version of FISA prevented us from intercepting a communication between Afghanistan and one of the 9/11 hijackers in 2001.

How about a followup on Mukasey's claim that the old version of FISA prevented us from intercepting a communication between Iraq and one of the 9/11 hijackers in 2001, made in the same speech. Or maybe on Mukasey's apparent belief that Iraq and Afghanistan are either the same place, or that one is within the other, or the two overlap somewhere.

BombIranForChrist has become a Normie clone

More of a Swan clone, if you ask me. Norman is a much better prose stylist, and would never start a sentence with "I guess," because Norman always knows.

But getting back to the main topic.
Have you made your phone call demanding impeachment yet?

Have you made your phone call demanding impeachment yet? - Thersites

What? When did W get his blow job?

"Mukasey has spoken about this in public, so if he's claiming that FISA prevented us from intercepting a key call before 9/11 he also needs to defend that in public"

I think it's a big deal too. He was being typically manipulative and misleading, (I think he was talking about a hypothetical call), but he did claim, point blank, that FISA wouldn't have allowed the surveillance, and it would have. And he's the Attorney General of the United States, tasked with fighting terrorism. So he knows that, and he lied.

But, he knows that any real fact checking will happen outside of the public gaze. Only on a few liberal blog sites, will his version be questioned. For Joe SixPack will take him at his word, since liberals are the source of all evil, that is all he needs to know.

No it did not happen.
He just made it up, like Bush claiming to have seen the 1st plane fly into the 1st tower on TV at the school.

He just plain lied.

.

Mukasey has secret information about this call, but he can't release it publicly, can't even admit it exists, because it would tip the terrorists off to our intelligence gathering capabilities. In fact, he can't even admit that we knew about the call -- oops, never mind.

National security! Terrorists bad! Secrets! Protect America! Flag lapel pin!

This administration believes in the rule of law. We're going to investigate this, and any wrongdoing will be addressed. Attorney General Mukasey will personally see to it.

Presidential pardons all around! And remember those flag lapel pins!

And he's the Attorney General of the United States, tasked with fighting terrorism. So he knows that, and he lied.

Being Attorney-General doesn't make him by definition either competent or diligent, so he could be ignorant of the actual relevant content of FISA either through incompetence or negligence, rather than being dishonest about its relation to the case.

Of course, either of those would also be problematic.

But of course. The great irony of this entire FISA debate is that the reported lapses that led to the Bush Administration's failure to foil the 9-11 plot were failures of omission - memos lying unread on agent's desks, reports of student pilots who had no interest in learning how to land a plane, failure to follow-up on terrorists suspects who were know to have entered the country. All very low-tech, all avoidable, and all conveniently forgotten.

If only we could be sure that, someday, there would be accountability.

...but the report clearly states that FISA was not to blame.

So Bush went around FISA, why?

It can only be because Bush didn't won't FISA to know what he was doing, because, whatever was the reason for wiretapping had NOTHING to do with terrorism.

Enough of this charade.

It goes back to what John Dean said about this adminsitration.

I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead.

Remember, Bush was wiretapping BEFORE 9/11 and not for terrorist reasons, because FISA never would have stop Bush, if indeed any of the wiretapping Bush has been doing was actually terrorist related, SO BUSH DID NOT WANT FISA TO KNOW BECAUSE FISA WOULD NOT HAVE AGREED TO IT.

Isn't this the story of Watergate all over again?

Who would trust guys like Bush and Cheney after the Gonzales incident with the ability to wiretap?

Here is TPM interview with the NYT journalist who broke the wiretapping story.

There were certainly others, including some I published in the book, that appear completely unconnected to terrorism: a doctor in Kenucky whose medical specialty might or might not have been of interest to bin Laden. Things like that, where there does not appear to have been a legitimate nexus to terrorism.

So, would FISA have okay that?

thersites: EVERY FUCKING DAY. DC business hours, of course, call often, and spread it around.

THE DEMS vetted Mukasey amd passed him through like a dose of epsom salts. I guess THE DEMS thought he'd just knaw on the Repubs only. As Forest Gump's Mom always sez " Stupid is as stupid does."

Keep in mind that the Bush Administration was also caught in a lie last year about needing an enhanced FISA when a German terror cell was broken up. It turns out the “old� FISA worked just fine in preventing that possible attack, as well. These criminals will lie and lie and lie to justify their criminality.

Look, Bush was warned repeatedly before 9-11 and did doodley squat to prevent it. September 11th was entirely preventable - the problem is not FISA. The problem is we had a retard as a president who couldn't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight.

Kevin was correct the other day that the quotation from the Sun left unclear exactly what Mukasey meant. That's because of the ungramatical tense of "has" and the fact that the Sun article divided the quotation in two and inserted other material. I'm surprised that no one has commented on the fact that the corrected quote leaves no doubt at all. From the 50:00 minute mark here:

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/08/08-03mukasey-audio.html

"We knew that there had [not “has�] been a call from someplace that was known to be a safehouse in Afghanistan, and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. We’ve got…sob…we’ve got 3000…sob…excuse me. We’ve got 3000 people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that."

When will the left learn that the vast majority of the electorate doesn't give a good goddamn about FISA or any other rigamorole hurdles put in place of our spies. Maybe those of us that spend our time blogging see these guys more as Barney Fife than James Bond, but the average voter hears this stuff and says "huh?" why are you worried about overseas phone calls, I don't make any, In Kevin Drum world, FISA was not to blame, in Youngstown, Ohio any inpediment to intelligence gathering was at fault. Until we learn to look at issues this way, we will probably end up with four more years of McCain.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-—Voltaire

So, the NSA under Condi Rice and a slew of other neo-con Republicans blew it before 9/11...just like the FBI under John Ashcroft blew it before 9/11.

We now know of two instances, at a minimum, in which neo-con Republicans in the Bush administration blew off the al Qaeda terrorist threat before 9/11, causing close to 3,000 U.S. citizens to die. Both of these breaches of "national security" involved the neo-con Republican's pathological resistance to using FISA, a Democratic Party enacted law, to protect U.S. citizens.

So, besides the pre-9/11 NSA intercept of a communication from a "safe house in Afghanistan" to a foreign al Qaeda operative in the U.S. (or vice versa, I don't think this has been made clear), a communication which the neo-con Republicans running things failed to investigate further, there is the incident involving FBI agents in the Midwest who were tipped off close to a month before 9/11 that an Arab guy at a flight school was acting suspiciously, apparently only wanting to learn how to fly jumbo jets, but not interested in their take-offs or landings.

These FBI agents desperately sought authority from FBI headquarters for a search warrant to check out this guy's personal effects, but the neo-con-controlled FBI turned down these close-to-100, pre-9/11 urgent requests.

One has to wonder if any of the neo-con Republicans running the FBI (and the NSA) had ever read FISA, especially the parts giving them authority to conduct searches (or surveillance) without a warrant of any foreign nationals in the United States, with the only provision being that the FBI (or NSA) had to justify their warrantless search (or surveillance) within 48 hours by taking their case to the FISA court.

In both of these "national security" breaches, the neo-con Republicans running things had all the tools necessary to uncover (and possibly stop) the 9/11 terrorist plot, but in both cases they chose not to do anything at all, essentially aiding and abetting the 9/11 hijackers.

This is what the neo-con Republicans continue to try to hide. Top Republicans in the Bush administration (especially at the FBI and NSA) weren't interested in any right-wing religious terrorist threat before 9/11 because they were too busy focused on other things, a faulty missile defesne system, planning their attack against Iraq, and subverting our democratic institutions.

What a bunch of creeps, and incompetent, to boot.

No Californian should forget in a few years that Dianne Feinstein voted for this clown. I'm sure we can come up with a better Democratic candidate. She should be out there with Lieberman, wherever he ends up.

Why bother the press, Kevin? They are busy reporting on haircuts and bowling. So the AG is a liar? Sound familiar? As in, just like AGAG? Who would have thought? Thanks Feinstein and Schumer! Looks like plenty of Dems are just like their GOP counterparts - defecating on the constitution one confirmation at the time. Perhaps it's time for some actual 'democratic' politicians?

So impeachment is off the table? Ah, I see, no blowjob this time, only illegal war, occupation, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, illegal detention, domestic spying, lies about 9/11 and FISA... that's not worth the attention of prudish America. We want some stained blue dresses, and, by the way, s$&# the rest of the world. They hate us for our freedoms (not for our bombs)!