To me, a lot of this boils down to whether or not Bush is actually DOING something with his actions...
... or whether he is just trying to get wire taps on phones where he COULD NEVER show a legitimate interest for tapping their phones.

Hopefully, this issue will be answered in the near future.

But judging from other attempts of the Bush administration to "spy" on American citizenry in the interests of fighting terrorism, it seems their dragnet is entirely too large resulting in no real success.


WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for the eavesdropping program, which did not seek court warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but ultimately deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program, which focused on the international communications of some Americans and others in the United States, as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program looked very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17spy.html


If we ARE ACTUALLY safer because of ACTUAL results, that is one thing.
But if the Bush administration is just spinning its wheels, doing a massive amount of work with NO actual results, then that is quite another.

If we are giving up "freedom" for the return of NO REAL SAFETY, shouldn't that concern us as Americans?