My Illegal Tactics are Required by the War on Terror: The Law is My Word-- Bush

During Bush's press conference today, he made the following statement:

I can fully understand why members of Congress are expressing concerns about civil liberties, I know that. I share the same concerns. I want to make sure the American people understand, however, that we have an obligation to protect yo, and we're doing that and at the same time protecting your civil liberties. Secondly, an open debate about law would say to the enemy, "Here's what we're going to do." And this is an enemy which adjusts. We monitor this program carefully. We have consulted with members of the Congress over a dozen times. We are constantly reviewing the program. Those of us who review the program have a duty to uphold the laws of the United States. And we take that duty very seriously.

What Bush is saying here is that, because he has a duty to uphold the laws of the United States, he has the authority to order a warrantless spying program which is in violation of the FISA act. In other words any program he approves is not in violation of any law. He's effectively saying, "my duty to uphold the law means that whatever I do is approved by law, because I approved it. The law is my word."

More significantly, he reveals some of what his reasoning was in ordering an illegal wiretapping operation by the NSA -- "an open debate about law would say to the enemy, 'Here's what we're going to do.'" -- i.e., even though this stuff is illegal, he couldn't try to change the law because that would tip terrorists off as to our methods.

This is very disturbing reasoning. Bush seems to believe both that he is empowered and that it is right for him to conduct illegal actiivities as President, because that way terrorists would never know what it is he's willing to do to catch them. Under that reasoning, he could use any completely illegal activity he wanted to prosecute the war on terror. Indeed, that's what he's done here -- he's ordered violation of the FISA act.

This is a serious threat to the American people. Our rights cannot be shunted aside by a President who finds them inconvenient. Our rights were here before he arrived in office, and they were supposed to be left intact after he leaves office. He swore he would uphold them, and now he's violating them.