Bush threatens America to save his skin

Bush has openly threatened to compromise national security to save his own skin, yet he isn't being called on it very widely. In an interview transcript, he said:

How do you compromise on something like granting liability for a telecommunications company? You can't. If we do not give liability protection to those who are helping us, they won't help us. And if they don't help us, there will be no program. And if there's no program, America is more vulnerable.
 
What I'm going to do is continue to remind people that unless they get this program done, we're going to be vulnerable to attack.

This wasn't an isolated slip of the tongue. Earlier , Kurt Opsahl reports, Bush had threatened:

If these companies are subjected to lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, they won't participate. They won't help us. They won't help protect America.

(Opsahl calls it a threat by the telecom companies, but as far as I know only Bush has publicly made the threat. I wrote to Opsahl pointing this out, but haven't received any response.)

Bush threatens that if he doesn't get immunity for the telecommunication companies for past violations of the law, they will stop cooperating with American intelligence, with his implied blessing. He didn't say that the telecom companies will become overcautious; he said flatly, "there will be no program." Bush intends, by his own words, to shut down terrorism-related electronic surveillance until he's safe from whatever those lawsuits would disclose. This is extortion.

In this morning's news we find that