George W. Bush Defends PRISM: 'I Put That Program In Place To Protect The Country'

[The Straight Story]

Former President George W. Bush defended PRISM, the Internet spying program that began under his administration but remained secret until The Washington Post and The Guardian revealed its existence last month.

"I put that program in place to protect the country. One of the certainties was that civil liberties were guaranteed," Bush told CNN in an interview airing Monday. "I think there needs to be a balance, and as the president explained, there is a proper balance."

PRISM began under Bush in 2007 and has continued under the Obama administration. The program allows the National Security Administration to collect internet and email data from the nation's biggest technology companies.

Bush spoke with CNN from Zambia, where he and his wife, Laura, are renovating a health clinic. The comments were his first since news about PRISM was made public, and his reflexive, nonspecific defense of the program will likely add to critics' case that it was approved with little oversight or debate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/george-bush-prism_n_3528249.html

[kentuck]

1. Forever looking for redemption...

wherever he can find it.

[villager]

3. Many here are rushing to defend such Bush-era programs. Perhaps he's vindicated

...when even the "underground" stops questioning the surveillance.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. If you don't approve of what GWB did you're an anti-Obama racist.

I read it on DU.

[villager]

5. That disapproval *used* to mean you were simply an "American." Or a "Democrat."

Not anymore, I guess.

[Catherina]

2. Well there we go! "Civil liberties were guaranteed" If Bush said so, it must be true n/t

[sibelian]

6. Well, I guess that settles the issue, then. Thanks, George. nt.

[Savannahmann]

7. I'll have to reconsider. After all, if both Bush and Obama like it, then it must be good

What we wish was the case.

Bush Obama

What is really going on.

Bush Obama

[ismnotwasm]

8. Fuck George W. Bush

Back under your rock George.

[siligut]

9. He probably believes this statement

George W. Bush was a useful idiot.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. He wanted to protect the country

the same way that mobsters want to protect shopkeepers.

[woo me with science]

11. IMO, one of the most important effects of the NSA spying disclosures

is the ugly exposure, finally, of the long denied collusion between the two corporate parties. We now have the spectacle of corporate Democrats brazenly siding with the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on the American surveillance state.

These corporatists in both parties have been walking hand in hand all along, on virtually every major issue important to the One Percent. We are only able to see their collusion and clinging together on *this* issue, because the outage across the country is finally bipartisan, and they can no longer hide behind their carefully propagandized Red and Blue Teams to pretend they are on opposite sides.

Finally we have bipartisan outrage, and, for the first time, we have a real opportunity to force change.

This is a critical lesson for all Democrats. The lie that we are constantly fed by the Third Way, that we must circle the partisan wagons in defense of predatory corporate policies for fear of enabling the Other party, is actually the means by which the Servants of the One Percent in both parties conceal their collusion and ensure that the American people are kept divided and unable to unite against their predatory corporate agenda.

"Courage is contagious."