'The reason the Bush administration didn't want to go after bin-Laden was two-fold. First, ..'

The Emperor President:

What's really behind Bush's domestic spy program and why their excuses will keep changing
by August Keso, December 23rd, 2005
Link Here

They will windmill their defenses hoping -- desperately -- that one rationalization or another will connect - stick, because if it doesn't...their dream of the "Emperor President"; omnipotent, freedom and liberty granting or refusing, all powerful Presidency will end with Bush's deserved impeachment.

Who could possibly keep up with the ever shifting, morphing, changing excuses the Bush administration has given for their illegal and un-Constitutional domestic spying program? They remind a person of the kid whom, when in a fight, would swing their arms in an overhead windmill fashion, desperately hoping against hope that one of the blows would connect...land...stick. Whenever one of the Bush administrations wholly fabricated legal "justifications" or -- lets just call it what it is, they got caught pulling a Nixon and now, are desperately trying to wiggle out of it -- lies are exposed, as the lie it is - they just make up a new one.

"But Moschella argued yesterday that espionage is 'a fundamental incident to the use of military force' and that its absence from the resolution 'cannot be read to exclude this long-recognized and essential authority to conduct communications intelligence targeted at the enemy.' Such eavesdropping, he wrote, necessarily included conversations in which one party is in the United States."

Imagine that! Spying on American citizens has suddenly become a fundamental part of Bush's unbridled powers. Right, because this administration can truly be trusted. Not like they've ever mislead the American people. If they say the program is only monitoring supposed "terrah" related conversations it must be true - right? If they say the program is only monitoring "international" conversations "in which only one party is in the United States," it must be true - right? Bush wouldn't mislead the American people - right? His administration wouldn't be using this newly fabricated power to monitor Republican political opponents, or Quakers, or Catholics - right?

"Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text...This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused," Daschle wrote in an op-ed piece for the Washington Post.

Daschle was the Senate Majority Leader at the time of the Congressional resolution authorizing -- and defining -- powers granted to Bush. That the Bush administration sought to add language specific to their actions within the United States, shows - proves - they knew beforehand, that the Congressional resolution did not -- repeat, did not -- give them authority to operate within the United States.

Camouflaged, however poorly, beneath the rubble of excuses for Bush spying on you, me, and the American people is the real reason this administration has taken to shredding the constitution.

"Safeguarding the security of the United States outweighs individuals' rights to privacy, the Bush administration asserted on Friday in a letter to Congress defending a top-secret operation that has been eavesdropping on Americans without court authorization."

There is a hint. Not the full story, but a pretty obvious hint. One that seems fairly benign at first glance, but it isn't at all. It is heinous! Bush now, according to them, has the sole power -- a power Daschle said didn't exist in the Congressional resolution -- to discard civil liberties under the ruse of safeguarding the security of the country. But what is the real reason:

"The vice president entered the fray Tuesday, rejecting the criticism and expounding on the philosophy that has driven so many of the administration's actions. 'I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it...' Cheney said. In wartime, he said, the president 'needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired.'"

Again, upon first blush, seems rather harmless, but again, it isn't - it is insidious. This administration has spent practically everyday since 911 trying to convince the American people that this is a "different world" it is a "post-911" world. A world where all the old ways of viewing things -- including our Constitution, freedoms, and liberties -- have changed...have to change. To drive the point home -- until Howard Dean finally said publicly what many had been wondering -- the administration presented a near daily barrage of new terror threats. Over and again, beating fear into the American people. "Be afraid...be very afraid," their silly terror threats were meant to convey. Be fearful enough to surrender your freedom.

Coupled to the notion of a "post-911" world was what? The stated idea of a terror war being a nearly never-ending struggle! This so-called war, this "new kind of war" won't take merely years, but decades...nay, generations.

That was it - there message. It's a post-911 world, and we'll be at this for a generation or two or three or... .

Well, if this is going to be such a long hard struggle why didn't they get after bin-Laden? Why, when they had bin-Laden dead-to-rights at Tora Bora, did they let him slip away?

"Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.

"But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora -- intelligence operatives had tracked him -- and could have been caught. 'He was there.'"

The reason the Bush administration didn't want to go after bin-Laden was two-fold. First, it would have made it more difficult for them to then, invade Iraq. The "terrah" king-pin is captured, why go into Iraq? People would have been much less willing. Secondly, and more importantly, the capture of bin-Laden -- in the mind of many Americans -- might have looked too much like victory.

How can Bush and Cheney have a "generational" war, if the opponent's leader is so easily captured? The answer: there can't be a generational war. Politically, people in the United States would have relaxed.

Geez...there hadn't been enough time to fully indoctrinate the American public into the "post-911" world-view.

The scary world-view where danger lurks round every corner, and the only way to protect the people from that "danger" is to give Big Brother the right to pick-n-choose, which freedoms and liberties you -- the American people -- get to enjoy. If bin-Laden were captured too soon, or at all, there would be no chance -- no excuse -- to establish a new American perspective on their liberties, or as Cheney himself so brazenly put it, "in wartime the president 'needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired.'"

Were bin-Laden so easily captured, and people believed the threat lessened, or at the very least, the struggle against terrorism not difficult as led to believe, the administration and their Neo-Conservative goal of establishing the Emperor President couldn't be fulfilled. Ultimately, that is what the domestic spying and the entire war on "terrah" is about. Shifting the power from that of three co-equal branches of government, to a paradigm in which the President wields all meaningful power.

The war on "terrah" is now, and has been since 911, one part reality based and another very much pure fiction. The war on "terrah" is, for Bush-Cheney and Neo-Conservatives, a convenient method to be the means of obtaining their madness.

Bush-Cheney and the Neo-Conservatives quickly recognized establishing the "Emperor-President" couldn't happen without an underlying force driving the American people away from their long-held civil liberties. They -- their words, as found in the Project for a New American Century -- needed a "new Pearl-Harbor." They knew too, eroding the freedoms and liberties outlined in the Constitution -- in a headlong assault -- wouldn't be possible. But, if there were to exist a war, a war lasting decades -- a generational war -- and during this so-called war, the President were to establish his unchallengeable right to willy-nilly pick-n-choose, which freedoms and liberties the people were allowed to have...why, over decades and generations - people would simply forget they ever had any rights, not granted by the Emperor-President, at all.

This administration's excuses -- lies -- for why they are spying on you, me, and all the American people, will continue to shift and change. They will windmill their defenses hoping -- desperately -- that one rationalization or another will connect - stick, because if it doesn't...their dream of the "Emperor President"; omnipotent, freedom and liberty granting or refusing, all powerful Presidency will end with Bush's deserved impeachment.