----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 8:45 PM Subject: Re: Incompetence?
>> How do you know he hasn't ordered his staff to 'fess up? What if the >> person(s) who did it (intentionally or through error/stupidity) acted alone, >> and won't confess? >If that's the case, then Bush is not running his own shop. If he really and >truly wanted to get to the bottom of this (rather than just get credit for >appearing to be trying to do so) he could and would put the fear of God into his >staff and make damn sure the guilty party was found and punished. Otherwise, >all the jokes about how he's a figurehead would turn out to be true. Unauthorized leaks have been part of Washington at least as far as I can remember. (So have authorized "leaks" but that's a different story.) Many presidents have been driven crazy by their staffers leaking as a part of their turf wars. As far as putting the fear of God in a staffer; if a staffer gets caught, (s)he will lose their job and face a slim possibility of jail time, as well as a tremendous amount of embarrassment. What good things will happen to them if they come forward? If they get away with it, then they keep their job and their honor. If they don't, they are sunk. The chance that someone mistakenly thought that the occupation of Valerie Plame was just unknown, and not deep cover does exist. The type of malice needed to assert that Wilson's appointment was a matter of a wife pulling strings for a husband only she thought was an expert, and bringing it to the attention of the press who just didn't do the proper leg work. That occurs all the time in Washington. Leaks of classified material also occurs fairly frequently. What doesn't occur frequently is what happened; outing a deep cover CIA officer. Now, having said that, I don't think that Bush should be given a free pass on this. After all of his pious lectures on the importance of secrecy, to have his White House out a deep undercover officer working counter-terrorism is absolutely amazing. It happened on his watch, was done by a senior staffer, and it is clearly is his responsibility. Further, he didn't seem too worried about it until there was political fallout. There is plenty of room for criticism on this front. But, turning this very reasonable criticism into a polemic isn't very helpful in my opinion. Over the top arguments by both sides keep us from addressing real problems. When the debate is at this level, both sides are too involved in proving that the other folks are evil to worry about the details required to actually solve problems. Further, it is hard to reasonably convince people with this type of argument. Now, one can, as Rush does, appeal to baser instincts, but that isn't helpful. I'm not putting you on Rush's level, Tom, but I really don't see the value in such an over the top argument. These type of black and white good guy vs. bad guy arguments aren't helpful to me. One way to think about it is that it's gotten me, who actually had a Gore sign in his yard in the ultraconservative Woodlands TX, to defend Bush. :-) Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
