What's the big brouhaha? If it hadn't been for all of those "civil-libertarian" knee-jerk liberals in the Democrat Party, George Bush could have personally listened in on the secret call, quickly identified the Saudi Arabian plotters, rounded them up, piloted Air Force One to Afghanistan, chased Bin Laden out of his cave, punched him out and lived on as the greatest President ever. He would have stopped off in Iraq, gathered up all of the weapons of mass destruction and kicked Saddam Hussein's butt. Oh, yeah, he would have smashed up all of the Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges before he flew home. Gasoline would be costing $.10 a gallon and everyone would be happy.

And, what do we have instead? an un-ending, multi-trillion-dollar war, a horrific domestic economic crisis, the complete loss of our country's moral reputation and Bin Laden still at large. And all because of one telephone call!

It becomes more and more amazing to me, that the lackeys of the Bush administration make outrageous comments, commit outrageous acts, and are never, ever held to account for them. Mukasey is obviously more of a lapdog than we imagined, but even worse than that, the guy is just as stupid as George W. Bush (I didn't think it was possible).

Forgot the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRtCs5Smlt8

Just saw the 4/11 episode of Real Time w/ Bill Maher ( On Youtube :) ) Richard Clarke was one of the guests. During the Overtime segment, where Bill answers questions from the Internet(s), some one wrote in and asked Richard Clarke about the Mukasey speech in San Franscisco. This comes at about 5:40 in the video. Clarke said he was trying to find out more about it.

"After a full and careful investigation"?

That would consist of reading the torture memo.

This evil and contemptible man has no right to any position of importance in our society. This is true of all the other Bush administration people who had any role in this sordid episode, up to and including Bush himself.

Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker have gotten more confident about calling the surge a success, and rightly so. "It's worth it," said the general. "We have seen a significant degradation of al-Qaeda's presence and its abilities," said the ambassador. "Al-Qaeda is our mortal and strategic enemy. So to the extent that al-Qaeda's capacities have been lessened in Iraq -- and they have been significantly lessened -- I do believe that makes America safer."

Presumably, then, if America is safer because of the lessening of Al-Qaeda's capacities in Iraq, then America was infinitely safer in 2003 when Al-Qaeda's capacities and presences in Iraq was zero. So let's look at the timeline:

• 2003: No Al-Qaeda in Iraq; America extremely safe
• 2005: Al-Qaeda in Iraq rampant; America's very existence threatened
• 2008: Al-Qaeda in Iraq diminished; America safer than in 2005 but much less safe than in 2003.

All this at a cost of 600 billion dollars and 4000+ plus American troops killed. And this is called "progress".

Glenn,

Thank you for all your hard work on publicizing this incident. I doubt that Mukasey ever would have been asked to clarify his original remarks if you had not continued to discuss this issue in your blog. Please continue your efforts on this so that the "core deceit" which prevades Mukasey's attempted justification of his claim has a chance of being exposed to the general public as well.

I know this is self-promotion, but I recently wrote an article titled "THE FOG OF FISA" that was printed on OpEdNews,com (now, don't sneer) on March 27. Although you might find my article far too long and boring, I discussed a lot of the lies about FISA that are promulgated by defenders of the Bush Administration and the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_blaine_k_080327_the_fog_of_fisa.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040802914.html

or click sig for linky

Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker have gotten more confident about calling the surge a success, and rightly so. "It's worth it," said the general. "We have seen a significant degradation of al-Qaeda's presence and its abilities," said the ambassador. "Al-Qaeda is our mortal and strategic enemy. So to the extent that al-Qaeda's capacities have been lessened in Iraq -- and they have been significantly lessened -- I do believe that makes America safer."

...What also hasn't changed is the sobering but firm bottom line the two envoys offer -- one that neither party wants to hear. While "progress is real," as Mr. Crocker put it, it is also "fragile" and "reversible," as Gen. Petraeus said. That's why Gen. Petraeus is recommending -- correctly, in our view -- that troop withdrawals be suspended after the five surge brigades are withdrawn and that further reductions be based on conditions in Iraq.

I'm continuously trying to alert my friends and family to this sort of thing. They pat my head and call me an alarmist and tell me to get more sleep...

Northwestwoods. Thanks.

I read the tiny-url article on the Wa/Po. page. An informant told me about the hugh, slow moving airplane, that flies overhead. The plane 'gadget' is top-level NSA broom? It sweeps up everything? It's DHS?

I assume it is eyes.

I saw it post/9/11.

It's not a featherdust.

It's bad Spring cleaning.

I know nothing technical.

Welcome to no privacy land.

As Mukasey hems and haws about what he thinks FISA does and doesn't, should and shouldn't, allow or require, it's becoming clear that not only he but most of congress doesn't have the faintest f*cking idea what the laws regarding govt wiretapping actually say. That goes triple for our media brainiacs who get more heated about affronts to their own warped self-images than they do about war crimes and govt corruption.

I started to think this some time ago, but resisted the conclusion out of some childhood naivette regarding the basic competence of adults in the adult world. I've just always assumed that grown-ups, especially ones in the highest reaches of power in America, have at least a fundamental grasp of the important things they are required to address in their working life. But I clearly overestimated the basic competence of this particular bunch of clowns.

When you compare the relative competence of generations past (that steered America through civil war, depression, successfully fought genuinely powerful and threatening enemies abroad and rebuilt the world using American money without seeing all our efforts turn to shit,) with today's imbecilic cocktail party circuit that can't manage to get the fucking power on in a country we "defeated" 5 years ago, it becomes clear we have the dumbest and most inept bunch of birdbrains ever to put on business clothes and try to play real grownups.

It's no wonder congress won't do the right thing when they don't even know the simplest and most basic facts about the issues before them. And don't even think about the media doing the homework it would take to convey these things to the public they allegedly serve.

It's a class war and if you're not one of them you're one of us, whether you know it yet or not.