More BushCo lies - these are important

BushCo is aggressively pushing their lies about surveillance

Bush's Dishonest Fear Mongering

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Posted on: February 27, 2008  9:30 AM, by Ed Brayton

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  HL Mencken

Watching the Bush administration posture and preen about how terribly unsafe we are since the House didn't vote for telecom immunity is like a perfect case study in just how brazenly the government can lie to people and have them believe it. Bush declared in a speech this week:

"To put it bluntly, if the enemy is calling into America, we really need to know what they're saying, and we need to know what they're thinking, and we need to know who they're talking to," Bush said at the start of his annual meeting with the nation's governors at the White House.
...

And the new lie from the administration is that without telecom immunity the phone companies will be sued for "billions of dollars." Bush even lied and said that it's already happening:

"Our government told them that their participation was necessary," Bush said. "And it was, and it still is, and that what we had asked them to do was legal. And now they're getting sued for billions of dollars. And it's not fair."

They are? Name the lawsuit, Mr. Bush. Name the lawsuit seeking "billions of dollars" from the phone companies. Here's the full complaint in the ACLU's lawsuit against AT&T over this issue on behalf of several prominent scholars. You'll notice that it does not ask for a dime in either punitive or compensatory damages, only that if the company loses the suit they pay the legal fees. Such suits seek injunctive and declaratory relief, not "billions of dollars." Just another lie.

... (link Dispatches from the Culture Wars)