Iowa’s two U.S. Senators disagree over President Bush’s handling of the controversial wiretapping of suspected terrorists. While Democrat Tom Harkin said Thursday Bush was guilty of breaking the law and violating the U.S. Constitution, Republican Chuck Grassley says the president is handling everything properly. Grassley says “(Bush) is going about it in a very responsible way but I still fall back on how our checks and balances system of government works and if he’s gone too far, I look for the independent judiciary to slap his hand.”
Grassley says there would be a lot of second-guessing if there’s another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Grassley says “If the president wasn’t doing the things that he’s doing and we were to have another September the 11th attack, we would have Monday morning quarterbacks saying ‘president, why weren’t you doing everything you could to stop that attack?’ because we had that sort of Monday morning quarterbacking going on after September the 11th.”
Grassley says leaders in the House and Senate have been filled in this week on the White House’s actions. He says “The people that are raising the Cain now have some egg on their face because the leadership of both parties was informed of this and they consented to it, they didn’t raise any questions about it, they didn’t tell the rest of us in Congress that they thought the president was doing something unconstitutional…and they’re backpedaling very quickly to protect their rear.” Grassley says the people who are being wiretapped are Al Qaida operatives, while everyday Americans are not having their privacies invaded nor are their rights being infringed.