Senate hearing on CIA nominee: Democrats rubberstamp Bush police-state spying

While there were scattered criticisms of the methods of the Bush administration, particularly its failure to consult with Congress, every senator on the Intelligence Committee accepted the premise that the United States is engaged in a “war on terror” and that the Bush administration’s escalation of domestic surveillance and wiretapping is a product of that war.

There was no challenge to the Orwellian label, “terrorist surveillance program,” which the Bush administration has chosen to apply to a program which actually involves the surveillance of the telephone calls and Internet messaging of nearly the entire American population—an estimated 225 million people. It would be far more accurate to describe the electronic monitoring and data-mining by the National Security Agency (NSA) as the “universal surveillance program”—or as the Pentagon once labeled its own version of the program, “Total Information Awareness.”

Not one senator, on the Intelligence Committee or off it, will acknowledge the basic truth that the Bush administration is a far greater threat to the democratic rights of the American people than all the terrorists in the world. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda may be capable of terrible crimes, but they cannot impose a totalitarian dictatorship in the United States. That threat comes solely from the American ruling elite and its military-intelligence apparatus.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/hayd-m19.shtml