Op-Ed: Why Do You Need Immunity, If You Haven't Broken the Law?

The Bush administration is desperately trying to get immunity for the telecom companies inserted into the next wiretapping bill. But let me ask a simple question - why would the telecom companies need immunity if they didn't break the law?

I'm not trying to be clever here. I'm asking a literal question. Isn't this an obvious admission that the administration did ask the large telecommunication companies to break the law for them? And if they did, why on God's green earth should we give them immunity without investigating what they did? In fact, shouldn't somebody be looking into doing the opposite - enforcing the law? Has enforcing US law become so quaint and obsolete that when someone pretty much admits they broke the law and asks in essence for a preemptive pardon, no one looks into it? Do we have a Justice Department anymore? Isn't it comical that these guys ran on the "rule of law" and restoring dignity back into the White House? Here's another ironic twist. We are all supposed to go along with warrantless wiretapping because "you don't have anything to worry about if you haven't done anything wrong." If I had a nickel for every time a conservative said that to me, I'd have at least $37.50. So, let me throw it back at them: If the telecom companies didn't do anything wrong, they don't have anything to worry about. Right? So, why would they need immunity from US law? How about we don't give immunity for breaking the law? How about we prosecute it instead? There were top level people inside the Justice Department and the CIA who quit over how illegal the warrantless wiretapping, the torture memos and the detainee detention programs were and are. They are all described as hardliners or conservative stalwarts. How about we ask these people why they think these programs are so illegal? How about we listen to them and change the programs back so that they are legal again instead of encouraging further law breaking? Send a bill that fixes the real problem and if he vetoes it, then say he is endangering national security, which he would be. And God forbid, if anything were to happen between the time he vetoed the bill and the time he accepts the new law, it's on his head. Is he willing to take that kind of gamble with the American people's security?