Bloomberg has a story up that claims the Bush administration, through the NSA, was talking with AT&T to set up a program for "domestic call monitoring" up to seven months before the attacks of September 11th 2001.

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

Some on the left, including those responsible for the lawsuit against a number of telecommunications companies for their role in the NSA program are up in arms about this new revelation.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion.''

At AmericaBlog, "John in DC" is similarly up in arms, and is cited approvingly by "McJoan" at Daily Kos.

This is important because, if true, it negates Bush's entire argument that the spying was needed to fight the war on terror. There was no war on terror before September 11, so why did Bush reportedly decide to start the process enabling him to illegally spy on Americans?

Take note of that second sentence, "There was no war on terror before September 11..." This single sentence is staggering. We can all agree that the attacks of September 11th were acts of terrorism. Therefore, terrorism - specifically, Islamist terrorism - was out in full force prior to September 11th. To begin with, there were the numerous attacks by al Qaeda on American troops, civilians and infrastructure in the decade prior to September 11, 2001. More importantly, the 9/11 hijackers spent years planning the airplane attacks. Only those with their heads buried in the sand for the past decade could claim that there was no war on terror before 9/11, simply because the government hadn't come out with flashy signs and moved it to priority number one on the foreign and defense policy list.

If nowhere else, the "war on terror" had been on for years in the intelligence agencies. Imagine if this program, in conjunction with telecom companies, had been put in place well before 2001, or before the Bush administration took office. Imagine the possibilities for what such a program could have accomplished in terms of counterterrorism; what the NSA and Intelligence Community could have learned about the hijackers' plan. But because some government PR department hadn't yet come up with the phrase "War on Terror," terrorism apparently did not exist.

This goes a long way in explaining why I consider the Republicans to be the stronger party on national security. There are, to be certain, fair and tough minded Democrats with whom I generally agree on this issue, but all too often the Democrats come out with statements like this one which go a long way in showing that they're more interested in what political gains they can make from the situation and don't even consider the damage it does to their credentials on national security.