Continuing to connecting the dots on COINTELPRO 2

This is a continuation of a post I made on 12/17/2005.

On November 8, 2005, we found out that the Bush administration has more then 10,000 dossiers on its supposed "political enemies. These dossiers include "intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, have spoken out against the President or Administration," It's also worth mentioning that "White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state."

On December 16, 2005, we find out that Bush himself "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying."

On May 11, 2006, USA Today reported that "The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY." Although the Bush administration and its defenders claim that phone calls are not being listened to, given the past history of the Bush administration, do we really know if this is the truth?

To recap what we presently know: Bush keeps a massive file of dossiers on his political opponents, Bush secretly authorizes the NSA to spy on any American they want to, and Bush secretly authorizes the NSA create a database containing information on nearly every single domestic telephone call made in the United States.

All of these actions have been taken, supposedly, to combat terrorism.

What does spying on normal American citizens, particularly those who have been critical of the Bush administration, have to do with combatting terrorism?