HENDERSON, Nev.
Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program Monday and said he believes the president has broken the law.
"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision _ we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Carter told reporters. "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act."
One wonders where Jimmy's outrage was when this program was instituted under the CLINTON administration. Evidently Jimmy takes his foreign policy agenda off the front page of the New York Times.
Our resident foreign policy failure continues...
"It's a ridiculous argument, not only bad, it's ridiculous. Obviously, the attorney general who said it's all right to torture prisoners and so forth is going to support the person who put him in office. But he's a very partisan attorney general and there's no doubt that he would say that," Carter said. "I hope that eventually the case will go to the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that when it's over, the Supreme Court will rule that Bush has violated the law." The former president said he would testify before the Judiciary Committee if asked. "If my voice is important to point of the intent of the law that was passed when I was president, I know all about that because it was one of the most important decisions I had to make."
It escaped the peanut-oil soaked grasp of former President Carter that this sort of program is not being utilized to eavesdrop between domestic phone calls between you and Aunt Betty but to listen in on people already identified by Federal Authorities as belonging to a terrorist watch list and communicating internationally. Under the War Powers Act and authorization of the US Congress in 2001 -- perfectly permissible.
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