How Extensive Was the Eavesdropping?

Frank Rich's provocative essay in yesterday's New York Times (1/8/06) entitled "The Wiretappers That Couldn't Shoot Straight" raises a number of further questions about why President Bush was so furious concerning the media revelations of his approval of warrant-free National Security Agency spying on Americans and was apparently so opposed to any Congressional investigation of what he had done. Given the Nixonian-type tricks committed by this administration toward Democrats over the past five years (e.g., the Swift Boat attack on Senator Kerry's presidential campaign), one thought instantly springs to mind -- was it possible that the NSA was inadvertantly or deliberately being used to intercept conversations of Democrats -- not terrorists -- to find out what they were planning to do to counter the policies of Bush and his party? Or, alternatively, is it possible that Bush used as some private legal rationale proposed by his lapdog lawyers to win re-election the justification that, among various Democratic campaigns, Senator Kerry's drive to the White House could possibly help the terrorists and therefore must be wiretapped. Who knows what Karl Rove and his underlings were up to? Nixon used the Vietnam War protests as an excuse to bug the Democrats in the 1972 presidential election. Karl Rove is surely capable of playing the same game in 2004.