The war from within

Part and parcel of Bin Laden's jihad is the intended consequence of a breakdown of America from within, and two news stories from today illustrate that effect.

The uncovering of the secret financial transaction snoop program by news sources was another hard breaking curve ball for the Bush administration just when they were busy heralding the capture of actual terrorists in Miami hellbent on waging jihad against, well, Sears (evidently I missed their ad campaign about Craftsman being the official tools of the Crusaders and Zionists).

Tony Snow defintely has his work cut out. This new program may not be viewed as sympathetically as the NSA thing was. Surely there's more (or less) than meets the eye here, but the thought of John Snow looking over my financial transactions is downright terrifying. Thank heavens my mother never had access.

If only this was a TV sitcom we could all have a hearty laugh at the flimsy explanations these media tygoons gave for going to press:

"It's a tough call; it was not a decision made lightly," said Doyle McManus, the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief. "The key issue here is whether the government has shown that there are adequate safeguards in these programs to give American citizens confidence that information that should remain private is being protected."

Yes, it's all about protecting America--by revealing state secrets. Not to be outdone, Editor Bill Keller of the New York Times said,

they were quite vigorous, they were quite energetic. They made a very strong case(against printing).

Bwaahahahahaha. Yeah, right.

The old "liberty versus security" debate will arise from the ashes again, which is fine. What's not fine is damaging national security if there were any other ways to accomplish getting a review, especially is we ever find out it was done for democrat political gain.

Not saying the subject isn't worthy, because any precedents set by Bush will carry into future administrations. I've no idea what the solution is, but I do subscribe to Lincoln's adage that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact". Jefferson's take on the matter is plastered to the sidebar here. It's something we need to get settled, but not at the expense of innocent lives if it can helped.

There's one final wild hair to consider--what if there are no programs at all? No NSA program, no financial snooping program, no nothing, just standard surveillance? The government could be engaged in a disinformation program trying to force the enemy into changing tactics, for all we know. Carrier pigeons or post-it-notes are hard to use for overseas communications, and we've got the airports well-surveilled. Just think about it. How many phone calls are occurring at any given moment? Remember, we're talking about the federal government here.