Maureen Dowd: The Squires of Surveillance

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 06:39:33 -0800

[Zepps_News] #Dowd: The squires of surveillance

 

 

 

Maureen Dowd: The Squires of Surveillance

 

Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, December 21, 2005

 

http://radarcontact.blogspot.com/2005/12/squires-of-surveillance.html

 

Dick and Rummy are holed up in the den of Rummy's Chesapeake Bay

retreat, Mount Misery, pawing through sheafs of transcripts of

wiretapped telephone conversations, hunting for inside dope.

 

Chinook helicopters patrol the skies above the red-brick waterfront

mansion. Rummy loves the take-no-prisoners lineage of his $1.5 million

getaway, built in the 19th century by Edward Covey, an evil slave owner.

Winter weekends by a crackling fire are cozy and conspiratorial, now

that the two men have nearby spreads in St. Michaels, Md.

 

These squires of surveillance while away their evenings sipping from

goblets of Glenlivet and perusing the illegally bugged phone

conversations of any American they please. Getting in the holiday

spirit, they're mining data to revise their naughty and nice lists.

 

" Check this one out, Dick, " Rummy says excitedly. " I've been reading

Jennifer Aniston's conversations for the last six months now, and I

gotta say, I don't get what she sees in this guy Vince Vaughn. 'Wedding

Crashers' was funny. They shot that here in this village, you know. But

I don't trust the guy. No way he's going to give up lap dancers and be

true. I just don't want to see Jen get hurt again. "

 

Dick grunts. He's deeply absorbed in the classified reports on the

F.B.I. infiltration of a Vegan Community Project and a People for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals protest against llama fur. He's ruminating

over a naked picture of Pamela Anderson emblazoned with the PETA slogan,

" I'd rather go naked than wear fur. "

 

" Porter Goss tells me that Pam was shacking up with Mark McGrath - you

know, he used to be with that band, Sugar Ray? " Rummy says. " Listen,

Dick, we need to jawbone about this flapdoodle about our stateside

spying operation that developed while you were on your whirlwind tour of

American torture chambers in Iraq and Afghanistan. "

 

Dick interrupts, " More torture. "

 

" Some pansies are making unwarranted claims that we should have gotten

warrants, " Rummy continues. " But we can't worry about the Constitution's

fine print during war. Besides, it's fun to secretly blow off the

super-secret court. Sure, warrants would have been no problem - the

court has turned down only five government requests since 1979. Why the

dickens shouldn't we go in and eavesdrop on whoever we want? Who says we

can't do sneak and peak searches whenever we dadburn please?

 

" Junior can try to model himself after Reagan, but you can't beat our

old boss Nixon when it came to channeling paranoia in a productive way.

Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover had it right: dark times call for dark

measures. We're thinking too small, really. Let's sic the I.R.S. on

Murtha, McCain and Feingold. Let's bug Condi and Lieberman - those

back-stabbing sons-of-guns want our jobs. Condi has no clue who she's

dealing with, right, Dick? I perfected the black art of infighting

before Condi was born. And while we're at it, let's tap Risen's phone.

His story in The Times about our wiretaps was an outrageous invasion of

our privacy and an assault on our monarchy's - I mean, our executive

branch's absolute power. We'll smoke out the rat who leaked that story. "

 

Dick takes a sip of Scotch and nods. " More snooping, " he says.

 

" Karl's new game plan of pretending to admit that we made some mistakes

in Iraq seems to be working, " Rummy muses. " The Kid's approval ratings

are picking up. But I hope Georgie's not falling for that contrition

guff he's peddling. We don't want him to go wobbly on us. We have a long

way to go in Iraq. The Iraqi security forces are still curled in a fetal

position. Oh, by the way, Chalabi called today. He thinks Iran did a

better job trucking in stuffed ballot boxes for the Shiites than we did

for the Sunnis. " He adds slyly, " You'd think we'd be better by now at

stealing elections. "

 

" More fraud, " Dick rumbles. " More rigged elections. "

 

Dick points at the flat-screen TV over the roaring fireplace. It's

time for their favorite Sunday night program.

 

" It isn't on yet, big guy, " Rummy sighs. " The Kid is yakking again to

the nation. He's so desperate he's pre-empting 'Desperate Housewives.'

The gals won't be on for 20 minutes. "

 

Dick glowers, sinking deep into his leather chair.

 

" Hey, I've got a great idea! " Rummy grins. " You wanna read a phone

transcript of a big cat fight between Teri Hatcher and Nicollette

Sheridan? Mueller just sent it over. Hot stuff! "

 

Dick perks up. Half his mouth inclines, indicating extreme joy. " More

Nicollette Sheridan, " he nods.

 

--

 

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004