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Aug. 14th, 2006 08:07 amI know I link to him a lot, but Glenn Greenwald is just so damn good and he's got some terrific things to say about the latest Bush administration spin:
Only Bush followers could point to a successful law enforcement operation which, by all appearances, complied with the law, and try to use it to argue how necessary it is that the law be broken. That is the central myth at the heart of the Bush desire for increased authoritarian measures -- that there is a forced choice between protection from terrorist threats and the rule of law.
That is a false choice. We can be a country which lives under the rule of law and which effectively battles terrorism -- just as we were a country which lived under the rule of law (including FISA) as we battled communism and a whole array of other external threats. Despite the bizarre effort by Bush followers to use this U.K. plot to argue for the need for the President to break the law, it actually demonstrates precisely the opposite.
Only Bush followers could point to a successful law enforcement operation which, by all appearances, complied with the law, and try to use it to argue how necessary it is that the law be broken. That is the central myth at the heart of the Bush desire for increased authoritarian measures -- that there is a forced choice between protection from terrorist threats and the rule of law.
That is a false choice. We can be a country which lives under the rule of law and which effectively battles terrorism -- just as we were a country which lived under the rule of law (including FISA) as we battled communism and a whole array of other external threats. Despite the bizarre effort by Bush followers to use this U.K. plot to argue for the need for the President to break the law, it actually demonstrates precisely the opposite.
