White House Admits They Lied About Missing Intelligence Due to Congress' Refusal to Pass Surveillance Act

Wow.

Will the dishonesty never end?

Read LA Times report "White House backtracks on claims of lost intelligence " 

Excerpt (The Time's subtitle/summary):

Hours after chiding Congress for not finishing a wiretapping bill and leaving the nation 'vulnerable to terrorist attack,' officials acknowledge all requested information is being received.

More from the report that you should know: 

Administration officials claim that they were informed by one company, which first refused to work with the government, that they later would comply with requests.  (Read: Someone was going to leak the compliance anyway, so they had to admit it.  Alberto Gonzales got his buns handed to him on a platter after he lied about stuff like this.)

They also maintain that there are new suspects that they haven't been able to monitor.  (Like nasty little nay-saying bloggers?)

The truth is that incompetence of the Bush administration led to 911.  Not incompetence related to lack of experience.  The people surrounding Bush had plenty of experience and he really is mostly a puppet, though one that is manipulated by the invisible strings of ego, laziness, and self gratification rather than direct commands. They were left high quality people from the Clinton administration to fight terrorism, but the upper level officials at the Bush administration cut out the counter terrorism staff from under people like Cofer Black and Richard Clarke by Condi Rice with the advice of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hadley, etc. so that more money could be freed up for tax breaks for the wealthy.  Tenet was actually forced on Clinton by the Republican controlled Congress. He was the man they would vote for the former administration was told, so the Republican leaders of the late nineties were part of the fault too, though Tenet was effective under the Clinton administration and the R's destruction of his reputation to save Bush was one of the most despicable acts I've ever witnessed in our government.

In addition the Bush administration just really didn't give a damn.  They had warnings by the boatload and they sat on them.  According to the airlines and airports the administration didn't even warn those venues of threats of hijackings they were receiving. (The Bush people said they did warn them, but these days I even believe businesses before the Bush administration.)

So, the lack in the Bush administration wasn't a lack of counterterrorism experience, but a lack of caring.

This is the result of counting up the monetary donations from big business rather than being connected with the people.

This is one reason why Barack Obama is so popular.  His support is heavily from small donations, monthly subscriptions, (available opportunities are at his webpage I'm sure, as ways to get money to the rest of the surviving candidates are available at their pages) etc. I'll list them below (and even put Obama's last in order not to turn into a shill, if even an unpaid one for the candidate who I support now).

johnmccain.com

hillaryclinton.com

mikehuckabee.com  

barackobama.com

It is true that, if we want to keep big business and fat cat from running our country we need to be the financial supporters of our candidates campaigns, not the "money people".

tags: surveillance bill  surveillance  telecommunication companies  telecom immunity  terra terra terra  politics  theyre lying again arent they?  rice  tenet  rumsfeld  cheney  richard clarke  cofer black  airlines  airports  obama  

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