Last week, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill making the Patriot Act law into perpetuity--with the exception of a couple of provisions that only get ten more years before another bill has to be passed. This is done to protect the Patriot Act from "sunset" laws. Apparently protecting the American people from the Patriot Act is less important.

Of course, this renewal must get passed in the Senate, which tends to be a bit more deliberative. Hopefully the Senate will do a little more than rubber stamp this attempt to abridge the rights of U.S. citizens.

As we've seen in the last month, all the intelligence in the world is worthless when the attackers do things on their own. The London bombings seem to be the work of "splinter" cells, which means they have no communication with the body of the terrorism networks. If this turns out to be true, it means all the heads we cut off the hydra will do nothing except sprout more independent and resourceful heads.

Interestingly, all the powers of the Patriot Act seem to be unable to get the truth out about all this Valerie Plame CIA operative "outing" business. Maybe the government doesn't want to turn its multi-headed monster on its own tail.

Why would close confidants of the Prez even care about the identity of a CIA operative? Why would anyone so close to the power center of the planet take this trouble of ratting out someone who, ultimately, works for them?

I know a few people have asked this question--it is the more important question rather than whether or not Rove or Libby broke the law with their loose lips.

One of the many big scare tactics the Bush Administration used to whip the nation into a fury about Iraq was the threat of the "mushroom cloud." We didn't want to get nuked by Iraq, did we? We didn't want to stand by like pussies and do nothing about this evil man who wants all Americans dead, did we? The nation (more than 90% of us, according to polls at the time) said no. We don't want to be the victims. We want to kick ass.

Plame was part of the CIA investigating the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims of the White House. She wasn't towing the White House line on this. And that whole thing about nuclear "yellow cake" in Niger, she was pretty sure it was bullshit, too.

Three years later, the Bush Administration claims we went into Iraq to spread democracy. Freedom on the march. Something akin to the sexy March of the Penguins. Natural. Benign and noble. This is manifest destiny. This is why we are a nation--to be missionaries for freedom. With bombs and guns.

So, even if the leak wasn't illegal, the whole reason this happened was to obfuscate the facts leading to the war in Iraq. An unnecessary, poorly planned and executed war.

We rushed to war before getting all the facts. We were lied to. We were baited into hate and fear.

Now, just nine months or so since a little more than half of the voting public said the war was OK and voted Bush back into office, a little more than half of America is saying everything about this war stinks. Thanks for pulling your heads out of your asses AFTER the election, folks.

So we're keeping the draconian laws supposedly put in place to protect us. We're fighting a few wars halfway around the world in order to protect us. We're searching handbags on the New York subways in order to protect us. All of this to make sure something like 9/11 doesn't happen again--even though we have no real idea of anything the evil doers are up to. Because our intelligence sucks. Because all those people we've had in prisons around the world for the last few years have no relevant information. Although we did found out they don't like it when the guards do nasty things to the Koran.

Just a side note: when my parents owned a bookstore in the 80s, we carried the Koran--and would special order the Anarchist Cookbook if asked. We got shit for this. Today we'd get subpoenas from the government.

Remember back in the day when we were told, "No one could ever imagine that terrorists would fly airplanes into buildings," and we believed them?

I guess part of growing up is realizing how much everyone lies to you because the truth is so damn dangerous.

Matt Worley ran a magazine called Lies in the 90s--and it was more truthful than most of what comes out of the Bush Administration's collective mouth.