March 06, 2006
Quote Of The Moment
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a statement. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."
More proof that the re-election of Gee-Dub was an essential step forward: would a Kerry Administration have induced the New York Times to "look too hard into the public's business"? No way!
Of couse, the proof is not yet in the pudding: Keller's words may be just hot air. But if the Times rises to the challenge, it would be a great day for American democracy.
It could start by noting yet another slam-dunk-obvious contradiction by the Bush Administration. Here's Bush from the same story:
President Bush has called the NSA leak "a shameful act" that was "helping the enemy", and said in December that he hoped the Justice Department would conduct a full investigation into the disclosure.
That's the company line, of course (ridiculous as it is): the NSA leak tipped off to al Qaeda that the Bush Administration is watching it. Yet, just a few days ago, CBS News reported that
U.S. officials tell CBS News that intelligence has picked up reports that al Qaeda in Iraq is planning what one source calls the "Big Bang", a spectacular terrorist attack in Iraq against either a single high-profile target or multiple targets simultaneously.
Nobody, to this blogger's knowledge, has pointed up the contradiction. Further, nowhere in the Post piece quoted above -- which is rife with Administration fulminations against leakers -- is it noted that if the NSA spying programme is illegal (as it surely appears to be), then its exposure is not a leak, but an instance of whistle-blowing; in which case the "leakers" should not, legally, be prosecuted, but rather protected from prosecution.
So, so far Keller appears to be blowing smoke. But we'll see.
Posted by Eddie Tews at March 6, 2006 10:55 AM
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