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Read other letters about this article
Having read this article and the responses to it, I believe Joe has made good, valid points that shouldn't be dismissed the way most of the letters have. I, too, see it as a good sign that some of the purged CIA staff have returned to serve Hayden -- yes, of course using our telephone records and monitoring telephone traffic is immoral, illegal, and, especially, ineffective and a waste of money. (A proper "terrorist" would be using first class mail to plan an attack, those postal inspectors don't fool around and that type of monitoring won't occur at the PO)
We (the readers and journalists of Salon) can't hope to straigthen out the Bush administration, the best we can do is to infer from other evidence (such as the return of the purged) the relative merits of administration actions. What we do is similar to what was "Kremlin Watching", from the seating arrangements, gossip, positions, titles and careful parsing of news releases (groups tend to obfuscate, not lie), we devine the truth.
From their friends and supporters (Big Oil, Media Chicken Hawks, Evangelicals, The Rich and Connected, Good Ole Boys) we knew this administration was going to be supportive of the energy industry, war, security, "family values", trust funds, etcetera. In retrospect, how much of their actions betray their friends? Any?
I think Joe's point is this, if we are to take a stand against this administration, we can't simply oppose all their efforts. We must choose our battles and find allies -- Conservatives are the ones who killed the Miers nomination, they killed their own. It is delusional to believe that opposition from Dems/Liberals means anything to them.
Finally, the house is on fire, do we stop to fix the noisy toilet or get help putting out the fire -- that help may come in November, maybe that help should be consolidated before then.
...Dan
