Karl Rove's Blood Libel

Chris Floyd

From CNN/AP: Rove Blasts Warrantless Wiretapping Decision. TOLEDO, Ohio -- Presidential adviser Karl Rove criticized a federal judge's order for an immediate end to the government's warrantless surveillance program, saying Wednesday such a program might have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Rove said the government should be free to listen if al Qaeda is calling someone within the U.S. "Imagine if we could have done that before 9/11. It might have been a different outcome," he said. It's time to be done with the dangerous fiction that this kind of thing is just "hardball politics" – or indeed, politics of any kind, as the term is normally understood in a democracy. What Rove is giving voice to here is nothing less than the new blood libel of our age: that those who oppose the Bush Administration's unconstitutional actions are opening the door to a new 9/11. The implication is clear: anyone who speaks up for the Constitution is working for the death of innocent Americans. They are, by definition, traitors. Thus they deserve what traitors get: death...

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