Homeland Security Sales Pitch - WP (re: BFEE lies and the PATRIOT ACT)

Homeland Security Sales Pitch
By William Raspberry
Monday, July 21, 2003; Page A21

The flap over how the falsehood about uranium purchases from Niger made it into the president's State of the Union message should not obscure what for me is the most troubling fact: Key members of the Bush administration, convinced in their hearts that America needed to destroy Saddam Hussein, thought it reasonable to exaggerate the threat and deliberately stretch the facts in order to sell the American people on that necessity.

The cleanup, fix-up, coverup effort now underway is an attempt to say to the electorate: This was an aberration; we do trust you with the truth.

Except they don't. The Justice Department is in the midst of a mighty campaign to blunt criticism of the Patriot Act, the key legislative response to 9/11 and, according to civil libertarians of various stripes, a major incursion on our constitutional rights.

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