King George of Swamp Castle and Other Assorted Rants

Danimal whipped up a real shit storm over at his blog last week when he had the nerve to suggest that (1) Big Brother really is watching us, and (2) the United States is moving toward a theocratic dictatorship. Here is an example of one of the comments he received, which was offered in an attempt to minimize BushCo's illegal wiretap program (I'll address the "theocratic dictatorship" issue in a later post):

[T]his is what the NSA program involved: NSA computers are given a list of phone numbers corresponding to known Al Qaeda agents. When a call is placed from one of those numbers to a U.S. number, the software analyzes the speech, looking for pre-flagged keywords. The keywords are derived from known AQ code words, and other words that might indicate that the parties were discussing terrorism. When one of those keywords pops up, the transcript is flagged and is sent for review by a human. Before this, no human eyes have looked at it, or listened to it. With the transcript, NSA agents can zero in on the suspects and investigate the crime.

Of course, this assessment of the NSA program is absurd on its face. Is this Danimal detractor actually suggesting that when a "known Al Qaeda agent" places a phone call to someone in the U.S., that the Bush Regime has no choice but to go outside the FISA Court in order to investigate this call? Does this person actually think that the FISA court would not retroactively approve a wiretap on a call into the U.S. that originates from a phone number of a known Al Qaeda agent?

The FISA judges haven't exactly been tough sells over the years. In fact, in the first 22 years of the court's operation, the FISA judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved. Even the corrupt Bush Regime has a fairly good approval record with the FISA court -- the FISA judges modified only 179 of the 5,645 BushCo requests for court-ordered surveillance, with virtually all of these modifications taking place in 2003 and 2004. But ominously, the judges "also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection in the court's history."

It is obvious to anyone with an open mind that BushCo's illegal surveillance program is going way beyond situations where known Al Qaeda agents place phone calls to people in the United States. Even House Republican Heather A. Wilson, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, is calling for a "full Congressional inquiry" into BushCo's domestic eavesdropping program. She's apprehensive about whom the Bush Administration is monitoring and why.

Do you think that Congresswoman Wilson, as chairwoman of the subcommittee that oversees the N.S.A., might have information on the spying program that we don't have? It would be a safe bet that she is aware of certain things that are giving her enough pause with regard to BushCo's "Terrorist Surveillance Program" to justify a call for a full Congressional inquiry. She certainly has access to more information on this issue than, say, Danimal's detractors.

Here is another comment posted to Danimal's blog:

A 2004 NBC report graphically illustrated what not having this program cost us 4 1/2 years ago. In 1999, the NSA began monitoring a known al Qaeda "switchboard" in Yemen that relayed calls from Osama bin Laden to operatives all over world. The surveillance picked up the phone number of a "Khalid" in the United States — but the NSA didn't intercept those calls, fearing it would be accused of "domestic spying."

After 9/11, investigators learned that "Khalid" was Khalid al-Mihdhar, then living in San Diego under his own name — one of the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. He made more than a dozen calls to the Yemen house, where his brother-in-law lived.

I loved that last comment, given that Bush apologists hardly ever want to take a hard look at what happened in the pre-9-11 days (unless, of course, they want to blame Clinton for what happened).

Indeed, it seems that whenever opponents of the Bush Regime bring up anything that happened (or failed to happen) in the past, they get attacked for either living in the past or "distractin' our country from more important concerns." Who could forget Bush's opposition to any type of investigation of the 9-11 attacks because such an inquiry could distract from the War on Terrorism, or Bush's resistance to any inquiries concerning whether BushCo lied to the country in the run-up to his Iraq Debacle. It's a common theme with this administration.

The reluctance of Bush and his apologists to look into the past always reminded me of that great scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the King of Swamp Castle tries to calm down a wedding crowd after Sir Lancelot mistakenly kills several guests in a misguided effort to rescue the King's daughter (I mean -- son). The scene starts out like this:

King of Swamp Castle: Who are you?

Prince Herbert: I'm your son!

King of Swamp Castle: No, not you!

Sir Lancelot: I am Sir Lancelot, sir.

Prince Herbert: He's come to rescue me, father!

Sir Lancelot: Well, let's not jump to conclusions.

King of Swamp Castle: Did you kill all those guards?

Sir Lancelot: Um... oh, yes! Sorry.

King of Swamp Castle: They cost fifty pounds each!

Sir Lancelot: Well, the thing is, I thought your son was a lady.

King of Swamp Castle: Well, I can understand that.

But once the King finds out that Lancelot was from Camelot ("Good Pig Country") and that a friendship with Lancelot may be politically advantageous, the King tells the angry and bloodied wedding crowd: "Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who."

Bush and his apologists act exactly the same way: "We're at War, people. AT WAR!!! So let's not bicker and argue over who screwed up where or who lied to who." But suddenly Bush apologists want to talk about what happened -- or what didn't happen -- four-and-a-half years ago, and that is fine with me.

The one thing that graphically illustrates what having an idiot in the White House cost us 4 1/2 years ago was the memo titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US." The now-infamous Harriet Miers handed this memo to our Deserter-in-Chief on or about August 6, 2001, over a month before the 9-11 attacks. That memo made references to patterns of suspicious activity in the U.S. consistent with preparations for hijackings, and also made reference to surveillances of federal buildings in New York.

How did Bush respond to being informed that bin Laden's desire to determinedly strike the U.S. via hijackings? Well, he stayed on vacation, of course, much the way he stayed on vacation in the run-up to and the unfolding of his Katrina Debacle, one of the most pathetic failures of his administration so far (and that is saying a lot). And what was Bush's ultimate response to 9-11? He incompetently invaded a fourth-rate military power that had no connection to the 9-11 attacks, and we all know how that turned out.

And that leads to why I find it so funny that Bush Lovers are now arguing that if we had their illegal "terrorist surveillance program" back in the pre-9-11 days, that we could have stopped the attacks. Who could have stopped the attacks -- the idiots in the Bush Administration? Is that a joke or something?

Geesus, Al Qaeda wasn't even on BushCo's radar screen in September of 2001, despite the warning a few month earlier from outgoing Clinton officials that dealing with bin Laden and his organization would be the new administration's number-one priority and despite the admonitions from the bipartisan-authorized Hart-Rudman Commission, which predicted a 9-11-type of attack where Americans would die on American soil, "possibly in large numbers."

In fact, BushCo basically scrapped the Hart-Rudman recommendations and turned the whole domestic terrorism deal over to "Dick" Cheney in May of 2002 (who naturally proceeded to do nothing on it). Remarkably, Condi Rice, BushCo's then National Security Adviser, was scheduled to give a speech on national security issues on September 11, 2001, and the text of that speech contained absolutely no references to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or Islamic fundamentalist groups. Condi's speech was, of course, cancelled after al Qaeda flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center buildings.

So you can understand why I laugh when I hear right wingers spew the BushCo talking point that we could have stopped 9-11 had we had Bush's illegal wiretap program back then. The truth is that we didn't need to have such a program to catch 9-11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar. The following is from an analysis by the Merkle Foundation (referenced in Al Gore's November 10, 2003 "Freedom and Security" Speech):

· "In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which was flown into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a terrorist meeting in Malaysia.

· These two passenger names would have been exact matches when checked against the TIPOFF list. But that would only have been the first step. Further data checks could then have begun.

· Checking for common addresses (address information is widely available, including on the internet), analysts would have discovered that Salem Al-Hazmi (who also bought a seat on American 77) used the same address as Nawaq Alhazmi. More importantly, they could have discovered that Mohamed Atta (American 11, North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (United 175, South Tower of the World Trade Center) used the same address as Khalid Al-Midhar.

· Checking for identical frequent flier numbers, analysts would have discovered that Majed Moqed (American 77) used the same number as Al-Midhar.

· With Mohamed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist, Al-Midhar, analysts could have added Atta's phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so they would have identified five other hijackers (Fayez Ahmed, Mohand Alshehri, Wail Alsheri, and Abdulaziz Alomari).

· Closer to September 11, a further check of passenger lists against a more innocuous INS watch list (for expired visas) would have identified Ahmed Alghandi. Through him, the same sort of relatively simple correlations could have led to identifying the remaining hijackers, who boarded United 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania)."

In addition, Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi "rented an apartment in San Diego under their own names and were listed, again under their own names, in the San Diego phone book while the FBI was searching for them."

So let's sum up: Danimal's detractor -- echoing Bush's State of the Union speech -- contends that had the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" been in place in the months before 9-11, Khalid Al-Midhar would have been detected and the 9-11 attacks foiled. Forget the fact that Al-Midhar was on the watch list under that name and that he bought his airline ticket using that name. Forget the fact that he was already being sought by the FBI and CIA as a suspected terrorist. Forget the fact that he was in the San Diego phone book under that name while the FBI was searching for him.

Hell, the only thing Khalid Al-Midhar didn't do was post a flashing neon sign above his San Diego apartment saying "Terrorists Live Here," yet our president and his apologists now insist that BushCo would have caught Al-Midhar and stopped the 9-11 attacks had it just been allowed to illegally eavesdrop back then.

Bull-Shit.