Bibles, Babies, and Bullets

Mood: Paranoid
Listening to: "Every move you make, every breath you take, I'll be watching you..."

DECEMBER 17, 2005

SPEAKER: GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BUSH: Good morning. As president, I took an oath to defend the Constitution. Like most of you, I don’t understand what it says, but I don’t have to. I’m president and I have no greater responsibility than to protect my people, my freedom, and my way of life.

On September the 11th, 2001, my freedom and way of life came under attack by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. It’s hard to believe that two planes could cause the perfect demolition of three of our nation’s best designed buildings. But never mind what engineers and physicists are saying, we all saw it on TV. It was the Iraqis! We’re fighting these enemies across the world, yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of our most critical battle fronts is the home front. That’s right, right here in America, Dick and I have enemies who are still whining about Florida.

And since September the 11th, we’ve been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting without our borders. I’m not sure who has our borders, but at least the terrorists don’t have them and you can thank me for that. One of the first actions we took to protect America after our nation was attacked was to ask Congress to pass the Patriot Act. We had to rush and borrow the Patriot act from some Germans. I don’t know German, but I know from my grandfather that the Patriot Act worked for his German clients long time ago.

The Patriot Act tore down the legal and bureaucratic wall that kept law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing vital information about terrorists threats. Me and my friends at the Federalist Society never liked that The Bill of Rights put a wall between the government and the people. The terrorists finally blew up that wall and the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals.

Congress passed this law with a large, bipartisan majority, including a vote of 98-1 in the United States Senate. Only one senator read the original Patriot Act in German, but 98 acted like real American patriots by not reading it at all. Since then, America’s law enforcement personnel have used this critical law to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters and to break up terrorist
cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio. Having the legal system prosecute dangerous people just doesn’t work. 

The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. It has protected American liberty, and saved American lives. The good people at Halliburton, Monsanto, and Dieboldt were protected from terrorists who want to take away their freedoms and their profits. The lives of the unborn have been saved from anti-Christian extremists who plot to take down my government and Supreme Court as I speak. Yet, key provisions of this law are set to expire in two weeks. The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks. The terrorists want to attack America again, and inflict even greater damage than they did on September the 11th. They want to change America into a “collectivist” dictatorship where everyone has to give up basic freedoms like tax deductions, driving Lincoln Navigators and praying to Jesus at a football game. I can tell you where I would be without these basic freedoms,  I wouldn’t be one of the richest presidents of the US. The laws that protect people like me from extremists are the same laws that protect all Americans from Osama bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein.
 
Congress has a responsibility to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence officials have the tools they need to protect the American people. The House of Representatives passed reauthorization of the Patriot Act, yet a minority of senators filibusters to block the renewal of the Patriot Act when it came up for a vote yesterday. These guys want to go back to the future with their filibustering.

That decision is irresponsible, and it endangers the lives of our citizens. The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics, or else, and the Senate must vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act.  The Constitution does not give Congress the right to delay passing the prsesident’s laws and policies. I was a history major at Yale and I know what I’m talking about. The President is the CEO in charge of the great American nation, that’s why it’s called the “executive” branch. Executive means that I’m the boss who gives orders. Legislative means writing those executive orders into law.

In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment. To fight the war on terror, I am using authority vested in me by Congress, including the joint authorization for use of military force, which passed overwhelmingly in the first week after September the 11th.
How could Congress give me complete authority? When you’re fighting a war, you don’t have time to study history like I did,  you don’t have time to think the difference between habeus corpus and a carrot. In times of war, you pick up the carrot and use it like a stick.

I’m also using constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief. Congress called me into perpetual, life-time service, just like the Constitution says it can.  In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with US law and the real, pre-1791 Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Since the terrorists don’t have our borders, we’re playing it safe and intercepting everything without worrying borders. Borders don’t prevent suspicious phone calls from Liberal, Kansas to Freedom, Indiana.

Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks. What could be more clear than the link between Liberal and Freedom? It’s my job to listen in and stop them! This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends, and allies. Yesterday, the existence of this secret
program was revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. Freedom of the press is an extremist attack on my program for keeping America safe from enemies. As a result, our enemies in Liberal, Kansas and Freedom, Indiana have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk.

Revealing classified information is illegal for everyone except the members of my administration, it alerts our enemies, and endangers our country. As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks. And the commission criticized our nation’s inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Well, we knew about those links but it was classified information. If we had leaked that information, the terrorists would have gone underground and waited to attack America after the 2004 elections. We couldn’t take the chance of being attacked with a weak, indecisive president in office. The future safety of all Americans depended on keeping classified information a secret, we weren’t able let the terrorists that we were onto the danger.

Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet in the Pentagon, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas, but we didn’t know they were here until it was too late because of a border problem. We may not have known where Nawaf and Kahlid were in the weeks before 9/11, but thanks to classified information we knew their names as soon as they hit the Pentagon. In fact, we knew the names of all the 9/11 hijackers, that’s how good we are at getting and keeping vital information a secret. But we need to get better at it before some free speech extremist blows my national security plan sky high.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities spelled out in Article I, Section 8. I’m in charge of everything, including captures of enemies on land and sea.  The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers and their supporters in Florida will be identified and located in time.

And the activities conducted this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad. By allowing activities to conduct authorizations,  I’ve been able to detect and prevent the possibility of attacks worse than Hiroshima from ever happening again in the future on America’s soil. The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Dick, Karl, Rummy and I review them personally. Each review is
based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. We're a bit behind catastrophic damage to our homeland, but Dick, Karl, Rummy and I are experts at asssessing threats to the continuity of our government.

During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president. These are guys are my best friends. You can trust them to approve any review of activities that help me keep and do my job. Some of those activities include keeping
track of 9/11 conspiracy theorists and Cindy Sheehan supporters, Moms for Murtha may be next so there’s a lot of work ahead. I  have reauthorized this internal self-review program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups without borders.

The NSA’s activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA’s top legal officials, including NSA’s general counsel, inspector general and the American Enterprise Institute. As I said, they’re my friends, they’re my daddy’s friends too, and we hand picked them for a reason, to keep our way of life safe form all kinds of foreign and domestic terrorists.

Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it. Just last month I told senator Hillary Clinton that we found out Arab terrorists aren’t the only ones who like falafel. Intelligence officials involved in these activities also receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties, consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization rather than the law. Sometimes that letter is a blank because anything is possible and everything is classified. But if you’re a law enforcement agent, a blank letter of authorization is easier to understand than the Fourth Amendment. This authorization is a vital took, I mean hook,  in our war against terrorists without borders. It is critical to saving American lives from un-American activities right here in our in our own homeland.

The American people expect me to do everything under my power under our laws and constitution to protect them and their civil liberties, and that is exactly what I will continue to do so long as I am the president of the United Corporate State of America. Thank you.