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| Home Front: Politix |
| Roberts blasts NSA critics |
| 2006-02-04 |
| Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas sharply attacked critics of President Bush in a speech Friday and questioned the nation’s resolve as it wages the war against terrorism. Speaking before members of the Kansas City Kansas Area Chamber of Commerce, Roberts strongly defended Bush’s domestic spying program, which has come under a torrent of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. Some critics have even accused Bush of breaking the law by tracking down terrorists with a secret program that intercepts phone calls between the United States and overseas. But Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, vigorously defended the practice, saying that “in a time of war and probable attack,” the existing law “ties the president’s hands.” “Much of the war against al-Qaida is being fought overseas,” he said at the Jack Reardon Convention Center. “… But the war against terrorism is not confined to foreign lands. The war against terrorism is being fought every day in our own back yard. America is a battlefield.” Noting that The New York Times revealed the existence of the spying program, Roberts said he had no doubt that America’s enemies appreciated having “another ‘leak peek’ ” at the nation’s security strategies. Roberts also vigorously defended Bush’s domestic spying program on a second front Friday. With the Senate Judiciary Committee set to hold a hearing on the program Monday, he sent a 19-page endorsement to Sens. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, the committee’s chairman and ranking minority member, respectively. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify at the hearing. “I am confident the president retains the constitutional authority to conduct ‘warrantless’ electronic surveillance within the United States,” Roberts wrote. He said that Congress had been fully informed about the program, as required by law, though some critics have complained that only eight legislators had been told. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said recently that the program undercut what Congress intended when it passed a 1978 law governing domestic spying. Roberts, however, did not allude to that report Friday. Instead, he focused on how the debate over national security in Washington had reached a level where partisans risked undermining troop morale and emboldening terrorists. “I fully understand the need and value for debate in a free society,” Roberts said. “But we should do so with the understanding that words have consequences and their effect not only influences the intended audience, a partisan base or otherwise, but they also affect the morale of our troops in the midst of war and the terrorists who question our resolve.” Roberts did not name any of the administration’s critics in the speech, the first half of which focused on the economic successes in Kansas City, Kan. But in a written statement issued at about the time he was addressing the chamber, Roberts admonished Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean for comparing the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping without warrants to the “dark days” of President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Roberts called the remark “ludicrous,” and said that Nixon had singled out American citizens engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment, not “enemies that had attacked the United Stated states and killed thousands of Americans.” He continued: “Every American should understand, our terrorist adversaries think of us as dust. Think about that. In their extremist absolutism, our lives, and lives of those we hold dear, have no value. The irony of it is that, in their minds, we are evil, which in turn justifies their acts of evil.” |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |