American Newsreel

From today’s Washington Post comes a report that the Pentagon is increasing its spying on Americans within the United States.

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts — including protecting military facilities from attack — to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

No surprise. Our sister site, Capitol Hill Blue, reported last year on expanded spying by the Pentagon using the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system that Congress scrapped but the Bush Administration simply moved to the Pentagon as a “black bag” operation:

Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice.

Although Congress cut off funding for TIA last year, the Bush Administration ordered the program moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” budget, which is neither authorized nor reviewed by the Hill. DARPA also increased the use of private contractors to get around privacy laws that would restrict activities by federal employees.

Six months of interviews with security consultants, former DARPA employees, privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering – in real time – vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

“Why,” an emailer wanted to know, “do you hate Bush?”

Sorry pal. I don’t hate President Bush. I am, however, saddened by what he and his policies have done to the country I love.

Freedom, as we used to know it, is vanishing in America, disappearing rapidly because of the rights-infringing actions of the Bush administration and a Congress that has rubber-stamped far too many of his policies.

The USA Patriot Act is, in my opinion, the greatest single threat to the future of this country ever devised by the idiots we too often elect to office. Promoted as a weapon to fight terrorism, it has — instead — become a tool the government uses to spy on virtually any American, monitor their financial records in real time and track their travel habits. The Department of Justice issues 30,000 “national security letters” a year to obtain information about Americans from employers, banks, libraries, credit bureaus and other sources.

Meanwhile, the war on terror is not being fought on the real fronts. Osama bin Laden’s zealots have been able to regroup in Afghanistan while our military resources were diverted to Iraq. In Iraq, where Bush proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” two years ago, dozens upon dozens of Iraqi civilians and American militrary personnnel die daily.

Hate? No. Sadness? Yes. Disgust? Yes. Frustrated. You betcha.

I believe we are close to meltdown in this country. Our society is divided as never before, pitting Republicans against Democrats, liberals agains conservatives, right against left. At the center of all this is George W. Bush and his Iraq war, a war based on deception of the American people, Congress and our allies.

Is there a way out? That remains to be seen. In a strong society, there should always be a way out but I’m not so sure the America we have today is all that strong.

It remains to be seen and I’m not sure I want to see the outcome.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) came back from Vietnam with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star but that service to his country didn’t stop a nitwit like Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) from calling him a coward because he wants the troops brought home from George W. Bush’s dirty little war in Iraq.

Now Schmidt is under fire in her own district and the bimbo can’t understand why.

“I am amazed at what a national story this has become,” she said in a statement. “I have been attacked very personally, continuously since Friday evening.”

You have to wonder how dumbshits like this get elected.

Sometimes you almost have to feel sorry for George W. Bush. While trying to duck a reporter’s question in Beijing, the increasingly gun-shy President tried one of his quick exits from the stage, only to find the door locked.

Reuters reports:

At the end of a day of meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Chinese officials, Bush held a session with a small group of U.S. reporters and spoke at length about issues like religious freedom, Iraq and the Chinese currency.

The final reporter he called on critiqued Bush’s performance earlier in the day when he stood next to Hu in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square to deliver a statement.

“Respectfully, sir — you know we’re always respectful — in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?” he asked.

“Have you ever heard of jet lag?” Bush responded. “Well, good. That answers your question.”

The president then recited a list of things of that he viewed as positive developments from his Beijing meetings, including cooperation on North Korean nuclear disarmament and the ability to have “frank discussions” with his Chinese counterpart.

When the reporter asked for “a very quick follow-up,” Bush cut him off by thanking the press corps and telling the reporter “No you may not,” as he strode toward a set of double doors leading out of the room.

The only problem was that they were locked.

Poor Dubya. He can’t even run and hide without screwing things up.

Sounds like the anger and dissent that so divides America today is alive and well in the halls of Congress where a debate on whether or not to pull out of Iraq turned the House of Representatives into a free-for-all that looked more like Britian’s rowdy Parliament than the stately halls of power in Washington.

Some may decry this lack of civility.

I don’t. The only way we can effect change and start taking the steps necessary to do something about the madness that controls our country is by getting mad — really mad. Leave the civility to those who teach manners to debutantes. This is war — outright war — and you don’t win wars by being nice.

Ask people what upsets them the most these days and they will likely tell you they just don’t know who to trust.

They can’t trust their elected leaders. They can’t trust the news media. They can’t even trust their church (religious leaders, it seems, get caught in as many lies as anyone).

Everything has to be taken with a grain of salt. Skepticism rules the day.

And it must. The ads you see on television are, for the most part, outright lies or pure hype. Political ads abandoned the truth long ago. News? Always a questionable source. Television news is guided by the entertainment divisions of most networks. Just look at all the time they spend hyping their entertainment shows: “Tomorrow, on the early show, meet the latest castoff from survivor.”

So, who can you trust? Only your instincts. Any consumer of information should question any source. Read as much as you can. learn as much as you can about the source. Do they have an agenda? Are they affiliated with any political or philosophical point of view? Do they have an ax to grind?

With enough information, you can — perhaps — learn the truth buried in all the hype.

Or maybe not.

Dubya’s return to scare tactics and tough talk ain’t selling this time around. The public has had enough of his lies. His Veteran’s Day attack on Iraq war opponents fell flat and nobody’s buying his “if you ain’t behind me all the way you’re a traitor” tactics.

Looks like the “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” rule still applies.

In Washington, a transcript of an official White House event is not necessarily an accurate report of what was actually said — especially when that transcript is produced by the Bush administration.

Seems presidential spokesliar Scott McClellan suffered from a rare moment of honesty recently when he told NBC reporter David Gregory at the White House press briefing “that’s accurate’ when Gregory asked if it was a fact that Karl Rove had leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

But the transcript of the briefing changed McClellan’s comment to “I think that’s accurate” and then the White House had the gall to demand that two publications that also produce transcripts of the briefings change their transcripts to fit with the lie. Both refused.

Video of the briefings clearly show McClellan responded “that’s accurate” to Gregory’s question. The White House, however, is sticking to its revision of reality.

Rewriting history is commonplace among our elected leaders. Members of Congress are allowed to “revise and extend” their remarks printed daily in The Congresional Record, the official publication that is supposed to be an accurate report of what is said and done on the floors of both the House and Senate. In fact, it is nothing but fantasy.

The Judith Miller debacle at The New York Times shows just how easily the Bush Administration manipulated the press in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq Her departure from what was once the nation’s newspaper of record shows just how badly the whole affair hurt the paper’s already damaged reputation.

Miller can keep spinning the story anyway she wants but she allowed herself to be used as a pawn of an administration that lied to the world about its reasons for invading a country that posed no threat to the United States. And the Times, already hurt by the Jayson Blair scandal, cannot escape responsibility for allowing a loose cannon like Miller to run amuck.

Sad day for journalism. Even sadder one for America.