READER COMMENTS ON

"Inspectors General Report on Bush Domestic Spy Program Finally Released"

(37 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... Bluebear2 said on 7/10/2009 @ 6:01 pm PT...





Unclassifed version of Congressionally-mandated report indicates very few in Bush WH, DoJ knew about unprecedented surveillance of American citizens Something about that statement led me to believe Bush and all didn't know. On the third read I got the implication of the sentence. Maybe "only a few" would fit better.

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 7/10/2009 @ 6:26 pm PT...





Bush may not have known, BlueBear...Still trying to plow through the report...

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... Axey said on 7/10/2009 @ 8:45 pm PT...





Imagine --- just imagine --- the outrage we'd be hearing from every side of the Rightwing blogo-mediasphere if the report [PDF], just out today from the Inspectors General of five different U.S. intelligence agencies, found that President Obama was carrying out a clandestine "Presidential Surveillance Program" that only he, a handful in the White House, and just two or three officials at the DoJ were aware of. I'll wait until you have had a chance to read the entire 43 pages but I'll tell you now you are going to be shocked to learn that Pelosi and Bob Graham were aware of it from the beginning. It really is shocking how many people knew about it and it wasn't until 2005 it was leaked.

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Axey said on 7/10/2009 @ 8:48 pm PT...





It's kind of amusing how much Pelosi actually knew and pretends she didn't know. I wonder how she will spin this one?

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... Axey said on 7/10/2009 @ 8:52 pm PT...





Oh, and Bush knew.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/10/2009 @ 9:00 pm PT...





Axey: your same old defense of "your guys", the Republicans, is simply to point out that other Democrats (might have) done the same thing. That's not a defense! That's 2nd grade nonsense!

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/10/2009 @ 9:01 pm PT...





And it's turning out that Pelosi was right about the CIA lying! If you want to distract by bringing up other things.

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/10/2009 @ 9:03 pm PT...





Axey: your response the other day to the Bridge to Nowhere was that Obama & others voted for it, too. Stop using the same old "non" defense. "I broke the lamp, Mommy, but Timmy broke the vacuum the other day!"

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/10/2009 @ 9:04 pm PT...





So let's never discuss anything anymore! And just point out that others have done it, too! And never have a subject anymore!

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/10/2009 @ 9:06 pm PT...





A classic rightwing tactic, is whenever a Republican does anything wrong, bring up Clinton. Or bring up Chappaquiddick. Which is really no defense at all, if you were in a court of law. If you were in a court of law, you couldn't say: "Well, HE did it, too!"

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... the zapkitty said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:47 am PT...





The real takeaway from this is that the report tries its very hardest to be a whitewash... and is still so very damning in so many ways. Secret programs that Congress, including Pelosi, was never informed of... the DoJ being set up to automatically self-certify an unending reign of terror threats in order to justify an equally unending reign of limitless and warrantless wiretaps... and not only does the report not absolve Bush, it states that Bush was so involved that he personally ordered the shakedown of the hospitalized Comey... funny how Gonzales could never quite recall that last little fact...

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... mick said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:53 am PT...





Once upon a time there was a great country called A.......,it was based on "laws" and no man was "above" the law, then a great plan was hatched to pervert the law .A puppet of no intelligence was to be put in the position of authority but he was only the cover for what was really happening .The citizens so indoctrinated into believing that A....... was the greatest country on the planet refused to see the truth ,some saw what was happening .Their cries were lost in the shout of " anti A......." , "unpatriotic "...Unimagined wealth was stolen from the people.Good people ,hard working people ,people so busy with surviving ,keeping their jobs ,keeping their homes ,keeping their families.

Then a man come along promising "Change" but he was only a "slogan" ,he kept the servants of the "puppet of no intelligence" ,left them in their positions .Soon the people realized that they had been deceived but it was too late.

He tried to give the people health care but even thou the rest of the world could do it for their citizens .The Lobbyist stopped it from happening ,their "people" made to much money to risk universal health care from reaching the people .

He tried to create jobs but the Corporations shipped more jobs off shore than the country could create .

Profit for a handful of people trumped the well being of the citizens of A......

The "puppet of no intelligence" was only a symptom.The disease continues ...

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:59 am PT...





What about this article? 2007: Sloppy Tradecraft exposes CIA drug plane; “Cocaine One” saga studiously ignored in the American press http://www.madcowprod.com/10092007.html

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:08 am PT...





EU Officials: Investigate CIA Plane Used

in Renditions Caught with 4 Tons of Cocaine How did 100 drug planes escape U.S. scrutiny? A $300 Million heist with next to no news coverage http://www.madcowprod.com/09102008.html

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:10 am PT...





...what Mick said...

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:48 am PT...



COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... Cosimo diRondo said on 7/11/2009 @ 5:37 am PT...





Seems I recall a Clinton spying program that rethugs were (rightfully) outraged against. Too bad. By their current logic, if only Clinton has been allowed to continue it, maybe we'd have prevented 9/11.

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... another joe said on 7/11/2009 @ 6:04 am PT...





A $300 Million heist with next to no news coverage Tens of BILLIONS disappeared in Iraq, totally unaccounted for. This "news" was promptly shoved down the memory hole by the mainstream media. The same lying liars that proclaimed what a "special" and qualified candidate the chimp was when he emerged from virtually no where in 1999 as the dominant repug. And that chimpy "won" in 2000 and that we should "get over it". That a ragtime group with box cutters defeated the most sophisticated national security and airline security systems in the world, all mastermind by a nemesis in a cave on a dialysis machine. There were WMD in Iraq and Saddam was a threat to this nation. That chimpy was "re-elected" in 2004, earning "political capital" that he was going to "spend" - in fact, the second stolen election with the margin of "victory" the thinnest of thin. All of the above was used to destroy our Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was used to loot the federal treasury. It is also all what this illegal domestic spy program is all about. It is still going on. And Obama has backed the secrecy up and threatening to veto a bill that seeks to make the CIA accountable. "Yes We Can" has turned into "No I Won't"!

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 7:55 am PT...





Obama got elected because it seemed THERE WAS NO OTHER CHOICE. What do they call a government where the choices for the people are very limited in "elections"...those countries are called "puppet governments", "totalitarian states" or fascist states-oligarcies etc etc. Well ladies and gentlemen...Obama seems to be the latest puppet of the corporate-fascist-totalitarian-oligarcical United States of America.

The Reagan revolution was exactly that...a revolt by corporate America against the "We the People" government. Reagan laid the groundwork for the corporate overthrow of the American representative democracy. Reagan said "government doesn't work" and then he set out to bankrupt the treasury, nullify the political opposition as "un-American" and weak, and instill fear of true Democracy. Reagan's regressive stance against civil rights and Roosevelt's New Deal along with dismantling Johnson's war against poverty and Great Society were applauded by regressive, ignorant "Reagan Democrats" whom Reagan also screwed over by destroying unionism and picking the middle classes pockets. Tax cuts for the rich were actually wealth being distributed upward to the "nobility". Bush Sr and Clinton simply kept Reagan's plan in place...and W Bush's administration put those policies on steroids and smothered American democracy to death.

Now Obama is the first President to preside over a defeated nation...America is defeated economically, the people have no economic power anymore, America is defeated politically because politcal power has been handed over to corporations. America is defeated morally because fear has replaced optimism and care for one another. Starting with Reagan; Americans stopped co-operating with each other and started competing with each other. That tore at the cohesiveness that makes communites and ultimately countries...

Obama is the smiley face that covers the corporate wolf who has raped and pillaged American wealth and pride. Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to post revolution America. Democracy is history.

You now live in a Wall Street-Bank-Corporate fascist state. Where do we go from here ? I don't know. But I do know that we must first realize what the reality is before we can act.

COMMENT #20 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 2:01 pm PT...





That's if "Reagan Democrats" weren't a media fabrication. Like PUMA and that whole thing. What was that Rush Limbaugh fabrication? Operation something or other?

COMMENT #21 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 7/11/2009 @ 2:03 pm PT...





Operation CHAOS, where hoards of Republican voters were going to register as Democrats and vote Obama out of the primary? Was that it?

COMMENT #22 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 7/11/2009 @ 2:10 pm PT...





(#19) Well done, Bluehawk. Perfect, in fact.

COMMENT #23 [Permalink]

... Steve said on 7/11/2009 @ 2:50 pm PT...





Blackhawk #19, I agree with Jeannie Dean regarding your post- very impressive. If you don't mind, I am going to copy your post to an e-mail (with proper credit) to send to some of the complacent Obama supporters on my "progressive" (ha!) e-mail list. Most of them probably already think I'm just a radical rabble rouser so no harm in rattling their cages.

COMMENT #24 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:30 pm PT...





And I'd like to share your fine micro-essay with my boyfriend's uber-conservative parents who keep honking on mightily about Obama's creeping Socialsim. This simply stymies me.

They can't (or won't) address: "...Tax cuts for the rich were actually wealth being distributed upward to the 'nobility'.." Righto, BH!! O, The Mendacity! What a helluva shell game. And people are actually embracing this 'socialism as cataclysm', propaganda-dross as their scary new group think; their agenda of agida and creepy collective call to arms. They will also fail (or refuse) to acknowledge the laws passed (by Clinton?) re: corporate "personhood" and "welfare" and all the other ways every single president and policy maker since Reagan has stripped it's citizenry of participation in it's own governance. All these pesky facts that have had more dramatic effect on their lives, income, and taxing status than all the Mexicans NOT in Mexico --- and yet they stomp on in their woefully misplaced, indignant rage. "..America is defeated politically because politcal power has been handed over to corporations. America is defeated morally because fear has replaced optimism and care for one another." Wonderfully heady, steady, dead-on stuff.

COMMENT #25 [Permalink]

... Phil said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:34 pm PT...





"So let's never discuss anything anymore! And just point out that others have done it, too! And never have a subject anymore!" I am actually reaching that point now.

Everything is such a "psyop mind fuck" now.

Our rants and complaints fall on corrupt lawless deaf ears. And now the internet is beginning to be attacked full swing. What's the point anymore? Lately I been more busy trying to secure my own computers than trying to research the propaganda and lies we are told on a daily basis. Might as well take the Constitution, the Public Vote, the Media, our Financial system, the Internet and drop them into a giant food processor, then pour the contents out on a dirty greasy garage floor with metal shavings and glass, then mop it up with a 20 year old stinking mop using the filthy toilet as a mop bucket never flushing the waste water out but refilling it with piss instead. I can probably guess what the spy program is. You don't need to expose secrets. What freaking secrets could there be? Think about it, they spy on anything and everything they can, using any technique from 2600 Magazine, to lock picking to hacking to the Jolly Rodger handbook, to germ warfare to get what they want. So if you don't want to be snooped on, don't go out, don't look up, EM shield your stuff, Vaccume insulate your sleep space against sound weapons, don't use the phone, web, radio, etc. Don't buy legal guns, don't use banks, don't smoke, don't get sick and on and on and on... If I had the legal authority to snoop using anything with no laws that's what I would do. FUCK THE STATE SECRETS SHIT. But you already know I swore a military oath against all that fucking nonsense. So I guess I am their enemy. What's the worst that can happen? They can kill me and my family. You want an invisible enemy?

No you don't cause they are the worst kind of enemy. Watch your backs...

COMMENT #26 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:35 pm PT...





Comments 22-23 Thank you Jeannie Dean...I too was on the Obama train...to say he's disappointed me is a huge understatement.

I too thought Obama was finally the progressive/liberal President to restore sanity after 25-30 years of right wing insanity...

But as I said in my post...what choice did we really have ? Steve...please be my guest...

COMMENT #27 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 7/11/2009 @ 3:44 pm PT...





Socialism = "giving my hard-earned money away to people poorer than me" - deplorable and un-American. Captalism = "giving my money away to people richer than me who will then ship my job overseas to exploit cheap wages and then find loopholes to not pay taxes on their profits, misplace the money, or just blow it all in one bank bailout" - the backbone of Democracy and the Heart of Free Trade.

COMMENT #28 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:03 pm PT...





Throughout American history, especially in the last century Liberals/Progressives have been the watchers of economic justice, free speech, civil and human rights and the environment.

It was liberal/progressives that protected the people from the corporate big foot and exploitation of the people. Almost immediately after Reagan's election...conservatives started spitting out the word *liberal* or *leftist* like those viewpoints were enemies that needed to be eradicated. It was a long term corporate media driven campaign to discredit and then marginalize liberalism. The coup de' grace' was when the media consolidated under corporate control...the right wing now had a media echo chamber to pump out lies and obfuscations of the truth...Americans became programmed day after day, week after week year after year, of right wing propagandizing-programming. Americans accepted falsehoods as facts, history was revised to reflect only right wing/corporate values and those that questioned authority were smeared and slandered as unpatriotic and unAmerican. The supposed journalists whose purpose it was to inform us and report facts for us to make judgements on...that media became simple mouthpieces for the corporate/rightwing agenda...and we as a people were thoroughly programmed to accept whatever we were told. We as a people became fearful of our own judgements and looked to authoritarian (right wing) figures to tell us what to think and feel. Folks...it's 1984...

We're living in a *double speak* world of perpetual war and accepted poverty as our fate; and Big brother gives us our 2 minute hates (usually against a liberal or truth teller)... I said earlier that I don't know where we go from here...I think maybe just being better informed critical thinkers is a start...stop buying the bullshit.

I include myself in that plea. Places like Bradblog are great for exchanging democratic ideas and ofr us as a whole to cypher the truth out of the lies we're told... Kudos to Brad...

COMMENT #29 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:05 pm PT...





See, no. During the primaries I never thought Obama was anything more than his Senate voting record indicated - a very clever and articulate centrist. For the record, he won my vote, as I (and many here at Bradblog) were mortified we would once again see a manipulated game. And I have to say, while I share your disappointments, he is governing exactly the way I expected him to. In some cases, exactly the way he said he would. And in every case, far better than I believe Hillary could ever dream. I am among the voters born after 1970, who until 2008 never voted for President when there wasn't a Clinton or a Bush on the ticket. I'm so disgusted with all of those ass-clowns it sometimes gives me ringworm. On my forehead. I was actually Ron Paul / Dennis Kucinich gal; all dressed up with no way to vote. I was crest-fallen by the way they were both utterly disposed of by the corporate media. 'Chuck Todd' is a four-letter word in my house. Thanks for permission to repost. Should I credit it to "Blue Hawk"?

COMMENT #30 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:07 pm PT...





Comment #27...Jeannie Dean EXACTLY!

COMMENT #31 [Permalink]

... Agent 99 said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:07 pm PT...



COMMENT #32 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:11 pm PT...





Comment #29....Jeannie Dean... Just share it... credit Bluehawk if you feel like...just get the word out.

COMMENT #33 [Permalink]

... Agent 99 said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:19 pm PT...





But... spell "oligarch" and all its sundry cognates correctly. Oligarchy.

Oligarchies.

Oligarchical. Thank you. ~Miss Pelling

COMMENT #34 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:31 pm PT...





Comment #31...99 that was a very good read...thanks

COMMENT #35 [Permalink]

... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:33 pm PT...





Comment #33.....99 duly noted...thanks If I have one complaint about Bradblog...he should include a spell-checker...

COMMENT #36 [Permalink]

... mick said on 7/11/2009 @ 7:43 pm PT...





... BlueHawk said on 7/11/2009 @ 4:03 pm PT... "I think maybe just being better informed critical thinkers is a start...stop buying the bullshit.

I include myself in that plea." Ditto BlueHawk.I came across a piece of investigative reporting that I think is in some ways a "bullshit" remover ,it relates to 911.(I know 99 but I think its all connected and germane to the discussion at hand.) It's a quiet long and has many "links" that should be read and viewed to get a fuller understanding of the topic.But in saying that "critical thinking" requires information and facts not time limits and word limits .We have all got use to News in 1 or 2 minute reports but that only dumbs us down .Anyway follow this link and follow the links it uses to support its position .Its makes you think ! P.S. Firefox has a spell checker us an add-on.

COMMENT #37 [Permalink]

... Phil said on 7/14/2009 @ 12:36 pm PT...

