President Bush says he will veto a terrorist-surveillance bill that contains provisions added by opposition Democrats in the House of Representatives, because he says the bill as written would undermine national security.
美国总统布什表示，他将否决一个有关监视恐怖分子的立法。这个立法包含众议院民主党附加的条款。布什说，因为这个立法的现行版本将损害国家安全。
President Bush says he will veto the Democrats' House bill because it is seriously flawed and would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists.
布什总统说，他将否决众议院民主党提出的法案，因为它有严重问题，将导致执法人员更难收集外国恐怖分子的情报。
"Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas," the president said. "It would cause us to lose vital intelligence on terrorist threats, and that is a risk that our country can not afford to take."
布什总统说：“民主党这个带有党派色彩的立法将把我们美国人享受的保护扩大到海外的外国恐怖分子身上。它将使我们失去有关恐怖分子威胁的关键情报。我们国家不能承担这样的风险。”
Mr. Bush says the bill would put in place what he says would be a cumbersome court-approval process for listening-in on telephone and computer communications between the United States and foreign terrorists.
布什表示，这个立法将为窃听在美国和在海外的恐怖分子之间的电话和截取电脑通讯，设置一种麻烦的需要法庭批准的程序。
He also complained the bill fails to grant retroactive protection from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that provided telephone and computer records to the government following the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
布什还抱怨说，这个立法未能给予那些在2001年9月纽约和华盛顿发生恐怖攻击以后，向政府提供电话和电脑记录的电讯公司提供具有追溯效力的保护，而使这些公司避免法律诉讼。
Many of those firms are facing civil lawsuits for cooperating with government eavesdropping. Mr. Bush says allowing those lawsuits to go forward will undermine the private sector's willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, which he says is essential to protecting the nation from harm.
这些公司当中有很多目前面临民事诉讼，原因是它们同政府合作，进行监听。布什总统表示，允许这些法律诉讼进行下去，将损害私营部门跟情报机构合作的意愿。布什说，这种合作的意愿对保护国家不受伤害来说非常重要。
"This litigation would require the disclosure of state secrets that could lead to the public release of highly-classified information that our enemies could use against us," Mr. Bush said. "And this litigation would be unfair because any companies that assisted us after 9/11 were assured by our government that their cooperation was legal and necessary."
布什总统说：“这些官司需要公布国家机密，这样做可能导致向公众公布绝密信息，我们的敌人可能用这些信息来打击我们。这些官司是不公平的，因为任何在9/11事件后协助过我们的公司都曾得到政府的保证，说它们的合作是合法的、必须的。”
Mr. Bush says companies that may have helped save lives after the 2001 attacks should be thanked for their patriotic service, not subjected to billion-dollar lawsuits that will make them less willing to help in the future.
布什还表示，9/11恐怖攻击后可能帮助拯救生命的公司应该为它们的爱国服务得到国家的感激，而不是承受涉及款项多达几十亿美元的法律诉讼。这些官司将使公司未来不情愿提供帮助。
Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy says the president is trying to bully Congress and mislead the American people on intelligence gathering.
麻萨诸塞州的民主党参议员肯尼迪表示，总统在试图威吓国会，并在情报收集方面误导美国人民。
In a written statement, Kennedy says President Bush wants Congress to pretend that his administration did not conduct what the Senator calls a "massive, illegal warrantless surveillance program that was one of the most outrageous abuses of executive power in American history."
肯尼迪发表书面声明说，布什总统要国会假装相信行政当局没有开展他所说的“大规模的、非法的、未经法庭批准的监听活动”。这些活动是美国历史上对行政权力的最无耻的滥用。
Kennedy says it is the president who is playing politics with national security as the Senator says neither the president nor telecommunications firms decide which laws to follow and which to ignore.
肯尼迪说，是总统在国家安全领域玩弄政治，他说，不能让总统和电讯公司来决定哪条法律必须遵守，哪条法律可以忽视。 |