The NSA Spying Scandal-What You Need To Know

Has anybody ever thought to wonder just who leaked the story of the NSA spying program to the New York Times. More importantly, has anybody ever wondered why?

We were all suppossed to be really up in the air when we found out that Bush, in conducting the so-called "War on Terror", was spying on American citizens, using the NSA to intercept and record telephone conversations and e-mail messages, without going through the FISA Courts as required by law. Even when Bush adamantly insisted that this would place an unnecessary burden on intelligence collection, and could even be detrimental to the process, most of us found the reasoning behind it suspicous.

After all, Bush has a number of days, after initiating surveillance, before he has to get court approval, and this more often than not is granted easily enough. Some Senators have suggested the FISA law can be changed, amended in order to more easily accomodate the changes in the pace of communications in these days, some 28 years after the FISA law was passed.

The bottom line is, they insist, the President is breaking the law.

But, come to find out, he might not be, according to the powers granted him under the War Powers provisions of the Constitution. He may be doing nothing more extreme than any wartime president has done, including FDR and Lincoln.

In addition, come to find out, the spying is, according to the administration, confined to those Americans who have been engaged in overseas communications with known or suspected members of Al-Queda, and assummedly any other known terrorist organization.

Can you hear the hissing sound? That is the sound of a different kind of leak, the leak of wind from the sails of the Administrations opponents. It's a subtle leak, one that may not be noticed until the final two weeks or so of the coming November elections.

Now, back to the original question of this post. Who did the leaking, and, well, why did the leaking leak? The answer:

I believe this to be a politcal ploy by none other than the Bush Administration themselves, and I earnestly believe the Democrats are taking the bait, hook, line, and sinker. They have taken it, and are running with it, and soon the very Republican operatives who planted this leak to begin with,though obviously by way of surrogates, will start to reel them in.

The first mistake the Democrats made was in not calling for an investigation of the leak on the grounds of national security, the way they did in the course of the Juddith Miller/Valerie Plame affair. They should not only have joined the ranks of theRepublicans in calling for this investigation, they should have out shouted them on it. They could have done so, and still expressed dismay at the potential abuse of power this might have indicated, and called for an investigation of that as well. Then, the Republicans would have been left holding thier dicks. Nor would it have been a contradictory position to take had they insisted on an investigation in a Secret bi-partisan session of the Intelligence Committee, for example.

That way, the leaker could have been punished-or, if appropriate, rewarded-while the truth could have come out about the Presidents potential abuse of power, if that's what it was, and all in such a way that national security or operational security would not have been compromised.

The way it stands now, the Democrats are the ones with their dicks in their hands. Sure, they are down their own pants for now, but it is still obvious for all the world to see. The Democrats seem to care more about partisan political gain, and in playing to their Far Left base, than they do about national security.

So who is the mastermind of this nefarious plot? No way to know for sure, but I suspect none other than Karl Rove, or maybe Dick Cheney, or someone from his office. If the actual physical leaker is ever revealed, of course, this will turn out to be some mid-level official, quite possibly someone none of us has ever heard of, who will in turn point the finger to a higher level official as the person who advised him to do the leaking. This person, if not Rove himself, will be someone directly conected to Rove or Cheney, or that office. Either that person, or the next one up the ladder, will then deny any involvement with any plan to leak classified information. The poor klutz who actually did the leaking, therefore, will be left to hang on his own, and may in fact be found hanging somewhere if it ever gets right down to the nitty gritty.

Does all this sound too bizarre to be believed? Well, think about it. Hurricane Karina, and the incompetent way that, and it's aftermath, were handled by the Administration. The Iraqi War, and the incompetent way that has been handled, to say nothing of the deceptive way we were brought into it to begin with. The Jack Abramof scandal, and all the Republican poltiicians with important links to the Bush Administration who have been tainted, and might be brought down, by it. The sorry state of the border situation with Mexico, America's overall standing in the world, the exhorbitantly high energy prices and it's resultant drag on the economy, the increasingly desperate state of health care, the environment, the budget deficit, the national debt.

What better way to avoid answering for all this than by somehow focusing attention on the one area where Bush is perceived still to be strong, perhaps the only area where he is seen as such-the fact that, since 9/11, there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil.

Yes, this is still a big deal to the majority of American voters. Yes, this is still one of the major issues that will drive his base, and an appreciable number of independant voters as well, to the polls this coming November. And they are all paying very close attention to what happens in the course of this controversy, and the coming hearings concerning it. A great many of them, unfortunatley, are only paying attention to what they are being told by those they should know better by now than to listen to.

Still, an appreciable lot of them are paying equally close attention to what the Democrats are saying, and doing.

Let the games begin!