Bush statements on wiretaps and court orders
You be the judge. The url below is a site which contains multiple citations and links directly back to the White House press site in which the President states that a court order is required in order to have a wire tap. The citations and links continue right up to late 2005. The statements were made in a period during which the government was engaging in wiretaps of calls in which at least one of the parties was here in the US (that would be domestic) and for which no court orders or judicial review took place.
The actions and the statements can't easily be reconciled. The President has since acknowledged that these wiretaps took place without court orders and had been taking place for years, but now states he doesn't need court orders.
It stretches credulity to the breaking point that he was at such pains to say that we were getting court orders and that "nothing had changed" if he believed that he didn't need a court order. In fact, why talk about the issue at all?
Can one fairly say this is truthful behavior? Can one say that it is an insignificant issue ala Bill Clinton's denials about sex with 'that woman'? I can't imagine how.
The reality is that you might feel fine about who wiretaps are being used against now, but once there is no 'rule of law' requiring oversight of their use, anyone could be their subject in the future. I can't see how these actions manage not to evoke congressional scrutiny and censure.
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/12/bush_on_wiretap.html
The actions and the statements can't easily be reconciled. The President has since acknowledged that these wiretaps took place without court orders and had been taking place for years, but now states he doesn't need court orders.
It stretches credulity to the breaking point that he was at such pains to say that we were getting court orders and that "nothing had changed" if he believed that he didn't need a court order. In fact, why talk about the issue at all?
Can one fairly say this is truthful behavior? Can one say that it is an insignificant issue ala Bill Clinton's denials about sex with 'that woman'? I can't imagine how.
The reality is that you might feel fine about who wiretaps are being used against now, but once there is no 'rule of law' requiring oversight of their use, anyone could be their subject in the future. I can't see how these actions manage not to evoke congressional scrutiny and censure.
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/12/bush_on_wiretap.html
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