Things That Just Piss Me Off

OK, we have made fun of GW Bush for quotes like “Our children IS Learning More.” and “Nucular” instead of Nuclear”, but he is not the only one we need to pay attention to.

Having an illiterate president that believes it is everyone else who is illiterate is not our only problem. However, do listen carefully to any bush speech. He will tell you something, then say, “In Other Words”, and tell you again because he thinks you are too stupid to have understood it the first time.

An example was on the bridge collapse recently. Bush said “We need to prioritize those things in building our infrastructure, and when I say we need to prioritize, I mean we need to make this a priority.”

And this is the guy that runs our country, decides which wars to take on, decides whether or not to continue the space program, and other “Prioritzed Issues”.

Now let’s check out another person in charge of gathering “INTELLIGENCE”, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act
By Chris Roberts / ©El Paso Times
Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:05:57 AM MDT

The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?

Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about.

The former Director of the NSA knew “A Little” about FISA. Like, “Yeah I heard of that. Some kind of court right?” lol

So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court.

You mean made a decision as in like they had to because the laws said so? So the bush administration “decided” to comply with the law, so they should get credit for thinking of it?

I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I’m prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what’s this program and what’s the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned.

I bet.

First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country.

Technology changing, yeah that is rough. “We worked ourselves into a position . . .” “Foriegn Terrorist was a foriegn terrorist in a foriegn country?” Ok, I think we got you so far here. Please continue.

The issue was international communications are on a wire

You mean wiretap?

so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that.

Yeah, that pesky wording in the law just gets in the way of things, doesn’t it. So in other words the wiretaps were illegal and bush did it anyway, but you say, “all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law.”

Yeah, that bank I robbed put me in a position because of the wording in the law that makes it illegal. Would that be a similar statement?

So the most important thing to capture is that it’s a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant.

Wait. Now it’s the foreigner in a foreign country that needs the warrant?

Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant.

Wow. That’s convenient. So if I understand you so far, A foriegner in a foreign country needs a warrant so you can wiretap him, but a foreigner would not need a warrant to buy a cell phone?

Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only

Yeah, probably something to do with that pesky wording in the law.

and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence

The last time you checked? Just when was that?

which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on.

Oprah Winfrey, OJ Simpson, Michael Vick, Judge Judy, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and anything else we want to add to the list so that you can basically wiretap anything you want? “it goes on and on and on”. I bet it does.

So when I engaged with the administration, I said we’ve gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify

But you didn’t say that it was illegal. We just need to “clarify” it. Good twist.

so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don’t know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don’t know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue.

Ok. Too easy. Not even going to add to that. Yes I am . . The bill was a bill, that really wasn’t two bills instead of one bill. The one bill superceded the other bill, I think, wait, it was two bills and a duck . . .

So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK,

Nice of them to agree to let you do it, but how can a court decision be retroactive? It wasn’t legal when you started doing it.

we stayed in business and we’re doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware …

We are now.

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