by Harrison Price
It seems as though when the Obama administration gets into PR trouble they pull out the Bush playbook as in “blame Bush.” We saw it after fanning the flames of the AIG bonuses got out-of-hand (it produced the populist reaction the Democrats sought until it became counter-productive) and we’re seeing it now to distract us from North Korea/Iran/Cap and Trade/Healthcare. The current distraction is about the wireless wiretapping under Bush (even though Obama might still be getting intel from it).
With Liberals we get into a subject, take “torture” for example. Republicans say it produced useful intelligence. Democrats say under “torture” people will say anything so it’s useless. Yet actionable intelligence was produced in the example of the attempt to blow up the Library Building in L.A. (there is no library there). So Democrats take a step back and switch gears saying: “Well we didn’t know.” Then we learn Nancy Pelosi knew. Democrats change their angle again and suggest the public is being lied to (so now the CIA is run by liars). When that doesn’t stick Pelosi goes into hibernation.
In an article I found at The Patriot Room The National Review has a different take:
“Had [President Bush's Warrantless Surveillance Program" been in place before the [9/11] attacks, hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi almost certainly would have been identified and located.” Another Friday night, another dump by the Obama administration of a report underscoring the vital importance of President Bush’s post-9/11 national security tactics.
The above quote about Midhar and Hazmi and is from Gen. Michael Hayden, the former CIA director who was director of the NSA when that agency ran Bush’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” It is a bombshell mentioned in passing on page 31 of the 38-page report filed by five executive branch inspectors general (from DOJ, DOD, CIA, NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) pursuant to Congress’s 2008 overhaul of FISA (the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).
There are a couple of interesting things about this. The first thing that caught my eye was the “mentioned in passing” part. Since the report was produced by the Obama administration they wouldn’t want to readily admit what sane people already know: good intelligence saves lives and good intelligence techniques allow for good intelligence.
The report also has more interesting revelations:
When congressional Democrats rolled their eyes, suggested that Gonzales was lying, and groused that a special prosecutor should be appointed, they well knew he wasn’t lying — but they also knew he couldn’t discuss the intellligence activities at the center of the controversy because those activities were (and remain) highly classified.
Between the time the time the collection intelligence activities that came to be known as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was first authorized after the 9/11 attacks until the warrantless surveillance aspect of the program was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005, the Bush administration briefed the bipartisan leadership of the congressional intelligence committees 17 times about the activities involved in the program.
How Democrats see Obama.
These facts once again reinforce my belief, backed up by example after example, that Democrats are very willing to play politics with matters of national security to appease their Liberal supporters. It will be remembered that The New York Times exposed this vital and lifesaving program in 2005 gravely damaging the United States’ ability to learn what our enemies were up to.
For his entire time in office (and still to this day when Obama stumbles) Democrats blame Bush for raping the Constitution, ruining the world, wrecking the economy, and for the rising price of oil. When the facts are analyzed, however, it is almost always the Democrats who have tofu on their faces but, like Obama’s report it appears buried in the back pages.
It may take years, but eventually we will get to the point in time when Democrats can’t blame Bush for all of the world’s ills (though we may be a few generations away from this moment).
In a way, this report is a swipe at former President Bill Clinton and his virtually complete lack of interest in fighting al Qaeda even though Osama bin Laden declared war no fewer than three times against the United States.
But that is the subject for another time.
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