Do you really trust George Bush to spy on you "the right way"?

That's the most important question, in my mind, regarding the newest domestic spying scandal.

We now know that George Bush, with the all-too-willing help of AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, has been spying on the phone records of tens of millions of Americans. Innocent Americans. And if you think that doesn't include you, it does - Bush is putting together a file detailing the phone calls of EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN.

The question arises, do you trust George Bush to run this program the right way? What do I mean by that?

1. Bush will tell us not to worry, that the program is limited in scope.

Well, no it's not. The program already includes the phone records of tens of millions of Americans and will eventually include the records of EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US.

2. Bush will tell us that he's collecting a list of who we've called and who's called us, but that he won't really be listening in to our phone calls themselves.

But why should trust him? He's lied before about this very program. He said the government was only spying on a few hundred Americans who were having international phone calls with Al Qaeda agents. Now we find out that Bush is actually spying on tens of millions of Americans, and plan to do it to all 300 million of us. So why should we trust Bush now when he tells us (which he will) that he's not going to be recording the substance of our phone calls themselves?

3. Bush will tell us that the records he's keeping of all of our phone calls will be protected, none will slip out to the public, on the Internet, and the government certainly won't sell these records to companies like telemarketers.

Let me reiterate that. We're trusting our private phone records to George Bush's promise that he's going to do a competent job running this program. Does anyone really believe that George Bush even fully understands the program he's approved, let alone that he's competent to run it well? This White House is THE White House of incompetence run amok.

4. And finally, George Bush will tell us that we have nothing to worry about assuming we're innocent. If you're a good American, you have nothing to fear with the government collecting a list of every single phone call you've ever made or received.

Again, the issue is competence. Do you really trust George Bush to ensure that somehow you don't get screwed in all of this? Your records won't get confused with someone else's? You won't accidentally get put on some list to have your actual phone calls listened to?

The bottom line is that this new and quite intrusive, and extensive, domestic spying program requires a leap of faith that George Bush will run it in a competent manner. Putting aside the very valid point that the entire program is terribly creepy and seems to be a violation of everything America stands for, there is the very real possibility that this White House will screw up, or just as bad, overreach. They'll make such a mess of the program that none of their promises will protect us, or worse, that some overzealous administration officials will go too far, and you and I will be the one's to pay the price.

That's the real issue with this new revelation that Bush spied, and lied. Do you really trust George Bush to be competent enough to spy on all of your phone calls while at the same time protecting your privacy?