ALTER ON BUSH….Back in 2004, I took a swipe at Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter for not being forthright enough about expressing his real opinion of George Bush. But those were apparently days of sweet innocence. Now that Bush’s illegal domestic spying program has been exposed, he’s not holding anything back:
We?re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator….Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story?which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year?because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker….If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.
Alter says that Bush summoned both the editor and the publisher of the New York Times to the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago in an effort to keep them from publishing their story about the NSA program. But given the lame and megalomaniacal justifications he’s been spouting since then for approving the program, it’s easy to understand why they didn’t find his request very convincing.
On the other hand, there’s still no word on why the Times held off on printing this story for a year. I can’t imagine that’s going to stay a secret for very much longer.
