Gore's speech makes this story even more prescient...

...Shrub was listening BEFORE 9-11

This kind of makes the whole "we were doing it as a response to 9-11" argument kind of irrelevant, doesn't it? Not to mention what it says about their supposed inability to ascertain the attacks were coming.

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/01/reading_compreh.html#comments
Reading Comprehension Can Be Fun
by emptywheel

    James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

    "The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions," Risen wrote in the book. "Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders" and "the most ambitious got the message."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml
Whatever the extent of this change of policy - WHAT WAS ITS JUSTIFICATION? And how comes it didn't help prevent 911?

LIHOP.

The rest is beyond my scope (as we have plenty of clearly proven/admitted crimes to respond to)

I read the above post several days ago(?) by way of Firedoglake, and was disheartened to see it....especially since it seems to have legs...