Karl Rove Agrees with prying1

A while back (20Dec05) I posted a blog on the surveilance of terrorist's phone calls into the U.S. I ended the post with: (quote)

So I'm left with a choice. Oppose the policy of our government to spy on it's own citizens and give more power to people that want to kill me (and you too dear reader!) or support the policy that allows one branch of the government to use it's constitutional authority to protect the nation.

I vote to support it.

(end quote)

In a radio interview by Hugh Hewitt on 26Jan06 with Karl Rove this exchange took place: (quote)

HH: I'm great. Now Karl, we don't have a lot of time, so I want to focus immediately on the NSA program, which was a part of a speech you gave last Friday, and which was the focus of a lot of the questions of the president's press conference this morning. And the white paper from the Department of Justice is out there, and Democrats are not buying it, or at least they're pretending not to buy it. Why so much resistance to surveilling al Qaeda operatives contacting their agents in the United States from the Democratic Party?

KR: Well, you'll have to ask them. I don't understand it, frankly. I think that any American, if they take their partisan hat off, would say that in a time of war, after we've been struck on our homeland, that the President of the United States, if he has the ability to have the appropriate agencies, with Constitutional restraints, and respect for personal liberties of Americans who might unintentionally get sort of swept up in it, if a phone call comes from a bad guy in some bad part of the world to somebody here in the United States, we want to know who they're contacting and what they're saying. And I frankly don't understand what the objection is. Look, under far less terrible circumstances in the 90's, the previous administration used warrantless surveillance in the United States. And this president, particularly after it was struck on 9/11, had a responsibility to do everything possible as commander-in-chief, and after the declaration by Congress to protect the country. And that's exactly what he's doing.

(end quote)

prying1 sez: I don't want to take credit for Karl Roves point of view. I'm pretty sure he missed seeing my post. But I am glad that he agrees with me and not with Michael Moore and the MoveOn.org group.

Thanks to RadioBlogger for transcribing the interview between Hugh Hewitt and Karl Rove.