http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/17/kristol-spying/
Kristol: It’s ‘Unbelievable’ That Congress Won’t Give Bush ‘The Benefit Of The Doubt’ On Spying »
Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol mourned that an “emboldened” Congress refused to give telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for cooperating with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping.
Kristol said it was “unbelievable” for lawmakers to question the judgment of administration officials. Instead, he argued, Congress should just give them the “benefit of the doubt”:
I think it’s kind of unbelievable, frankly. It’s a judgment call. We don’t know. Not to give the administration the benefit of the doubt when they have career people, military people, intelligence people like Mike McConnell and Mike Hayden, and the attorney general, Mike Mukasey — I mean, these are not political hacks. These are not ideological people.When they say this is important for our national security, the Congress — to block this legislation I find pretty amazing.
Watch it:
The Bush administration secretly conducted spying in violation of the Constitution and the law for four years before The New York Times disclosed it in 2005. For years, the White House lied about these activities to the American public. For example, in 2004, Bush claimed that “a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way.” At least one telco refused to comply with the Bush administration’s request because it knew the actions were illegal.
Even now, the administration continues to lie about the consequences of the Protect America Act expiration. Just yesterday, Bush stated that it will now “be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack.” But as an expert from the Cato Institute admits, this statement isn’t true: “There’s no reason to think our nation will be in any more danger in 2008 than it was in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006.”