You Have A Pre-January 20 Mindset

This is the problem with you libs. You don't understand that the world changed on January 20, 2001. That was a terrible, terrible day in our nation's history. And after the tragic events of that day, nothing could remain the same.

We could have just sat back, and not responded to the immediate threat we now faced. Other Presidents took that attitude. But after what happened on January 20, we understood that oceans couldn't protect us. Walls couldn't protect us.

We had to protect ourselves.

That's why the President had to start monitoring Americans phone calls in response to that dastardly Inauguration Day.

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion.''

And that's why the President had to draw up plans to attack Iraq immediately after January 20, to respond to the events of that day.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

Well, of course, Mr. O'Neill! If you want to just sit there and operate with a pre-January 20th mindset, then go right ahead. But the President and his allies understand that we couldn't go back to how things were before January 20. Back then we had Presidents who engaged with the community of nations and respected civil liberties and used diplomatic means to solve foreign policy problems. That led us down the path to January 20. Do you want THAT to happen again?

See, this is why the USA PATRIOT Act had to be written as a response to that day:

Whether the Administration could have anticipated 9/11 or not, the proponents of the USA PATRIOT Act were waiting to go long before that day. Similar antiterrorism legislation was enacted in the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, which however did little to prevent the events of 9/11, and many provisions had either been declared unconstitutional or were about to be repealed when 9/11 occurred.

James X. Dempsey and David Cole state in their book, "Terrorism & the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security," that the most troubling provisions of the pre-USAPA anti-terrorism laws, enacted in 1996 and expanded now by the USAPA, "were developed long before the bombings that triggered their final enactment."

So you can all keep sticking your heads in the sand and thinking we have nothing to worry about, that the events of January 20 could never happen again. But thank goodness our President doesn't think that way. He'll never stop using January 20, 2001 as the lens through which he views his Presidency.

See, that was the day a few terrorists almost got within 200 feet of the Presidential motorcade:



And if you think our President is ever going to let that happen again, you're sorely mistaken, mister.