Bill Watt’s Blog

I just can’t imagine the garbage being thrown out by the current administration. How can these guys be serious?

Iraq:

I’m from the Midwest… I fully believe the “Support Our Troops” mantra. What I don’t understand is that everyone else supports the troops more than the president that has sent them to a distant corner of the globe. The US is an amazingly wealthy country and we’re not funding the effort to save lives the way we should. I’m a believer that we’re either in or out… and if we’re in then we should be in full scale. How can we be spending billions of dollars on this effort and not have enough money for body or vehicle armor? We should be doing everything we can to support the people that have signed up to defend our country… even if the action in question is not directly defensive but instead a different direction chosen by the people in charge.

Halliburton:

Do even need to say anything about these guys? I found called Halliburton Watch that is worth a read if you’re at all curious about the ongoing issues around this organization. I understand people want to make money on stocks but we don’t have to have a horrible bilking of the government and the country to make it happen. Actually… I guess the government is signing up for the fleecing but the rest of us are not being asked. I always thought there was a bid process for contracts like this but apparently our worst fears are right.

Katrina / Wilma / …. :

What more needs to be said… clearly this was a bungled mess. I like to think “How could anyone have known” but then you look at the years of reports and warnings and it looks like blatant disregard for facts. If these were people in any job where I’d ever worked they would be fired after the first hint of what these folks have done. But not these guys… they keep on rolling!

CIA Exceptions to Torture Laws:

Sure, what reasonable person would not want the CIA to have special exemptions to the torture law? I know the rough position we’re in… so many parts of the world don’t believe in the rule of law and we’re trying to stop them from doing bad things to our people. I don’t know what the answer is to a quandary like that but I do like to think that we’re better than that.

But when we pass a law, pass it in congress for all to see and then the administration goes and carves out exemptions. CIA is exempt. Outside the US is exempt. Military combatants are exempt. This is one more example of how this administration would gladly sell us for kidneys and spare parts if they could find a way to not be noticed.

Wire Tapping:

Wow… here is a great example of the hubris that I believe will be recorded in history as the calling card of the Bush administration. There are several parts of this story that are crazy:

Process is too slow:

First off, they have a special court that they can go to at any time to get a wiretap approved. Their concern is having to pass a litmus test and if they’re worried about not being able to pass the test of a private court… what does that tell us?

They have the right to bypass the law:

So many folks are weighing in that there is no way the president has the legal option to bypass the courts. The president thinks he has the right but doesn’t want to discuss it or have anyone review his authority. This guy wants to be an autocracy best case or a theocratic autocracy worst case.

Access to all Data Ever:

And just when I thought the wiretapping stuff was as odd as the invasion of privacy, now they are demanding access to data ranging from library books to google searches. The best part is the lack of review. Just look at all they do and everything is colored by one goal on their part… do it without review because they know best.

I love that Google said no to their recent request for search trends. I know there isn’t any personally identifiable information in this request… but based on everything else we’ve seen we know this is the first in a series of moves to put all data under their control.

I think I need to be better about what data I’m sharing online.