Archive for Saturday, February 11, 2006

Roberts’ politics

February 11, 2006


To the editor:

The Journal-World has published two recent articles noting that U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts defends the president's legal right to authorize conversations of Americans to be wiretapped, in the attempt to safeguard us from al-Qaida, in spite of the FISA law that requires court approval for all such activities. In the first article, Sen. Roberts indicated that Democrats who question the wiretaps are politicizing the issue. In fact, it appears that it is Sen. Roberts who is playing politics.

First, he references Democrats when many Republicans also question the legality of the wiretaps and, second, he appears to have resolved the issue in favor of the Bush administration without sufficient objective evidence to support his conclusions. He should be calling for a fair and impartial investigation into the issue.

Likewise, as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he should have sought a thorough investigation of the Valerie Plame outing. Instead, he played politics by questioning whether she was, in fact, an undercover operative simply because she had an office in the CIA building.

If voters want our country to continue to be governed by the rule of law, with appropriate checks and balances on the executive branch, we should remember Sen. Roberts' rhetoric and actions when he again seeks re-election.


Jamesaust 8 years, 10 months ago

LOL I must agree with Arminius on that point, at least.

If I were an undercover CIA agent, I would have no problem if my spouse were to write up an op/ed piece calling the President a liar about the supreme issues of the day and have it published in the New York Times under the theory that when people ask "who is this nut?" journalists won't ask "who is married to this nut?"

Richard Heckler 8 years, 10 months ago

Either the president is illegally wiretapping americans or not. Why not take a look?

For all we know another Watergate is cooking? Blackmail perhaps? It's okay to find out since concerns have been brought to the surface from within.

Speakout 8 years, 10 months ago

I have a lot of experience in this area and I will tell you that not every person who has an office in Langley is a CIA agent under cover or not! And the "enemy" knows that, even though you two do not.

The law states that it is illegal to out a covert agent, PERIOD. Rove, Libby and probably some high placed elected officials outed her. That is illegal, even though it may or not be obvious that she was an agent. Lets let the law do its job. We need to reestablish the law of the land since our president has never known how.

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