Bush is greater danger to us than terrorists

It’s disturbing that so many letter writers and commentators are not the least bit concerned about President Bush exercising unchecked and unbalanced power.

What’s with the "I have nothing to hide" argument? I don’t have anything to hide either, but that’s not the point. The point is that we all have something to protect, namely our freedom and privacy. Isn’t that what our troops are fighting and dying for all over the planet? Isn’t that what the Cold War was about? Now we have to buy into the right-wing neocon propaganda that we have to destroy a democracy in order to save it?

The old standby — "If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear" — has been the party line of every invasive police state from the Spanish Inquisition through Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. It is insulting nonsense for Bush to claim that he needs wiretaps without warrants to protect Americans from terrorism.

He also continues to falsely claim that following FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) law would be dangerous, when in fact it protects both intelligence gathering and citizens’ rights.

Court oversight provided in FISA does not automatically stop or even delay monitoring of suspicious communications, since quick authorization can be obtained after monitoring is started. Because the court’s findings are confidential, going through the FISA court would not give away our activities to our enemies. FISA does not eliminate domestic surveillance; it helps protect us from malicious spying that can occur when power over civilians is unlimited.

In view of the above, I find it appalling that the Justice Department has launched an investigation into who leaked classified information regarding Bush’s secret domestic spying program, instead of investigating why the program exists in the first place. Something seems completely awry here. Why has Bush blatantly disregarded the legal process that would allow him to conduct the surveillance of Americans?

This is a sad day for America. The investigation should be into why one president can be impeached for matters that should have been strictly between him and his wife while another is not impeached for manipulating intelligence, unilaterally invading another sovereign nation, endorsing the torture of detainees, lying to the American people and now perpetrating what appears to be a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.

James V. Burke