It’s a grim day for the Republic when John Ashcroft is the last line of defense of our liberties.
I didn’t know if I should barf or scream or set my hair on fire after watching former Deputy Attorney General James Comey describe how Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his Tonto, Alberto Gonzales, tried to pry the Constitution from Ashcroft’s cold dying hand.
Imagine the scene: Attorney
General Ashcroft in intensive care with the two White House enforcers attempting to get him to put his weakening John Hancock on a wiretap program so rancid with illegality even a right-wing pinhead on painkillers could tell it was a bullet hole in the Bill of Rights.
But now let’s get beyond the weird episode of ER-meets-Survivor. With Ashcroft resisting, the President did an end-run around the AG to authorize the whacky wiretap program.
Were they really worried about terrorists, the guys who terrorized Ashcroft?
The truth is, the power they sought was not for hunting al Qaeda; after all, wiretaps on Osama’s pen-pals have never been challenged.
The key here is the contract. The US Constitution prohibits the government spying on us. So they contracted it out. No-bid billions to ChoicePoint Inc. and other “data mining” outfits.
What won’t come out in the hearings is that this was just one tentacle of a program to create an American KGB, a system of mass snooping which, in the end, didn’t catch any bad guys – but will be very useful indeed in creating the purge lists that will ensure the re-election of the regime in 2008.
– Greg Palast
***
Get the full story in Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf? – the first chapter of the new edition of ARMED MADHOUSE.
And you’ve just GOT to see this: the flash video, “Be Careful What You Say” (produced by White Noise) on the making of the US KGB, based on the words of Armed Madhouse. Click here to see it on YouTube (and join our YouTube channel) or download it here (.MP4 file- works on video Ipods) — and make sure you pass it on.
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