The Lantern Brigade: Bin Laden Helps Bush on Domestic Spying

Bin Laden Helps Bush on Domestic Spying

“When Osama projects a new Sept. 11, he creates at once the most potent argument imaginable for the president's desired expansion of executive powers. All kinds of executive powers.”

NPR.org, January 20, 2006 · The Bush administration has released a 42-page legal argument assembled by the Department of Justice saying it's just fine for the president to spy on Americans without warrants if the president thinks those Americans are talking to terrorists. It's pretty obvious some folks at DOJ had to pull some all-nighters to finish this assignment.

Why the rush? It might have been because the Congressional Research Service unburdened itself of a 44-page study on the same subject Jan. 5. The CRS, a non-partisan creature of the Congress, basically concluded that the president has no such right.

The relative merits of these two legal views will be aired by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has a hearing on the matter for Feb. 6 (to be carried live on NPR and NPR.org).

But whatever the Senate may decide, and whatever federal judges may eventually rule, the White House is really relying on the case it's making for its expanded powers in the court of public opinion.

If you ask Americans whether the president should get a warrant before conducting searches or surveillance, most will say yes he should. But if you ask whether it's okay to tap the phones of people living here and talking to terror suspects overseas, Americans will say yes to that, too.

In one poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, 44 percent of Americans said they were worried about the administration's anti-terror efforts going too far in compromising constitutional rights. But 48 percent said they were more worried that concerns over such rights would keep anti-terror efforts from going far enough.

While early signals of the public attitude on this issue have been mixed, the White House has now received a major boost from a most unlikely source: Osama bin Laden.

Not as unlikely as one would think, had one been paying attention over the last 4 years.

Without meaning to help the president, Osama has weighed in with another of his basement tapes, this one offering a truce in Iraq and Afghanistan but also threatening fresh attacks on the American public sometime in the future. Given his responsibility for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the leader of Al Qaeda has to be taken seriously -- no matter how mannered and predictable his warnings.

Threats of a new "terrorist" attack on U.S. soil should be taken seriously. As a matter of fact, they should be taken so seriously that we begin to really examine 9/11 and who profited from it. We should also examine how many other Osama tapes have been such a help to Bush.

Of course, taking Osama seriously does not mean his missives will achieve their desired effect. It must be said that the man has shown an unfailing instinct for self-sabotage when he attempts to influence American attitudes. He's about on a par with the Japanese war planners who thought attacking Pearl Harbor would persuade the U.S. not to fight in World War II.

Witness the awkwardness with which the master terrorist tried to derail the American president's re-election in 2004. So counterproductive was his pre-election salvo that some rabid anti-Bushies suspected White House involvement in its release.

One must come to some conclusion about the pre-election Osama appearance and the last one; both extremely convenient for the Bushites:

Perhaps Osama is really a dunce, thoroughly retarded, and believes that he could endanger Junior's election by making fun of him. Not likely. Americans are a bull-headed lot, and see Osama as the devil incarnate. Osama's, apparent, disdain for Bush, would have the opposite effect on Americans and I cannot help but think he knows that.

Perhaps Osama sees the advantage of having Junior in the White House. After all, this administration has done more to help his cause than he could have ever done alone.

Now, Osama has popped up again, right when Junior is about to be taken to the proverbial woodshed about domestic spying, threatening another attack on American soil. This may well have the effect of frightening Americans into agreeing to shred what is left of the Constitution and crown Junior, King of America.

If that is the effect it has, then maybe Osama is not so retarded after all.

According to Bush, himself, that is Osama's goal, because he hates our constitution and the freedoms it represents.

If Bush is allowed to continue to put himself above the law, and the rest of us way beneath it, Osama will have won, without even bothering to launch another attack.

All he has to do to defeat America is make a cheap audio tape, because, you see, the Constitution is what makes us the U.S. of A. Without it, we are just another Banana Republic, and it is every man and woman for themselves.

Lawlessness at the top will lead to lawlessness everywhere, and sooner than the Bushites think!

In fact, all that Osama's past forays in psy-war have achieved is the hardening of the animus against him, and the uniting of people who otherwise disagree about the war on terror. Even the harshest critics of President Bush -- at home and abroad -- have to join ranks at the thought of another Sept. 11.

What is more, as these tapes force us to take cognizance of Osama, we focus on how we can thwart him. That means rooting out his operatives and their accomplices in the U.S. Such a train of thought leads to surveillance, including extraordinary means of surveillance.

So when Osama projects a new Sept. 11, he creates at once the most potent argument imaginable for the president's desired expansion of executive powers. All kinds of executive powers.

The extraordinary surveillance began before 9/11. How helpful was it?

Besides, how can we be sure that the surveillance is of the nations enemies and not just Bush and Cheney's "enemies?"

These people, the Bushites, have been caught lying so many times, that it would be treason to trust them to tell the truth about anything.

In time, as we all learn more about how the current spying program works, it may be that warrants can in fact be obtained rather easily and quickly -- even retroactively, after the spying has been done. Time need not be lost, nor effectiveness.

Unless, the spying has been on political opposition and dissenters. That could prove to be a problem in the FISA court, a big problem!

In fact, there may be nothing to lose by complying with the law except possibly convenience and total control of the process. Now that we all know the spying program exists, it makes no sense to fear leaks about its existence.

Again, what we don't know, is on whom was the spying was done, exactly. Who are all these Al Qaeda suspects in the U.S.

I, for one, would like to know.

Anyone who is known Al Qaeda should be arrested on the spot.

These are the sorts of considerations that might prevail in this matter -- among judges and with the public -- if the matter can be considered rationally. But if Osama intrudes and persists in pushing us into the orange and red levels of alert, that will be impossible.

It is much easier to see how that serves the Bush administration's purposes than to see how it serves al Qaeda's.