Day: January 14, 2007

Vice-President Dick Cheney has admitted that the US military and CIA have been spying on the financial dealings of Americans — intelligence gathering normally authorized only by civilian policing agencies.

The New York Times broke the story overnight, reporting that the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency had been using “national security letters” to obtain the banking and credit records of Americans and foreigners suspected of terrorist activities in the United States.

In this week’s “don’t mess with me because I think I’m somebody” department, we consider the antics of MSNBC’s pundit wannabe Tucker Carlson.

If the revamped Iraq war plan fails, it will be time to withdraw most U.S. troops. Or send more in. The United States is seen as having a limited number of options, all grim, if President Bush’s “new way forward” hits a wall. The pressure for U.S. disengagement will be immense. Yet a further escalation, however unimaginable now, may not be out of the question.

Few expect helicopters to beat the air over Baghdad in a hasty retreat of the kind that closed the books on America’s defeat in Vietnam. The Mideast and its oil are too important.

Congressional opposition to President Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq has opened a new front in an increasingly complex war, setting the stage for political battles whose effects may be felt long after U.S. forces have come home.

The battle could well subvert administration efforts to bolster the power of the presidency, which many Bush supporters believe was undermined in the wake of another unpopular war a generation ago.

The Pentagon and to a lesser extent the CIA have been using a little-known power to snoop into the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage within the United States.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman admitted Saturday the Defense Department “makes requests for information under authorities of the National Security Letter statutes … but does not use the specific term National Security Letter in its investigatory practice.”