Life as a Spectator Sport

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Sunday, October 16, 2005

Why not just call it Treason?

I read AmericaBlog every day, but don't often quote it, because--although I don't think I have ever disagreed with anything published there--the tone can be a little shrill at times.

And yet, sometimes it takes a raised voice to wake people up. Here's part of what John had to say today:
If a senior White House staffer had intentionally outed a CIA agent during World War II, he'd be shot.

We're at war, George Bush keeps reminding us. We cannot continue with business as usual. A pre-9/11 mentality is deadly. Putting the lives of our troops at risk is treason.

Then why is the White House and the Republican party engaged in a concerted campaign to make treason acceptable during a time of war? That's exactly what they're doing. On numerous news shows today, Republican surrogates, their talking points ready, issued variations of the following concerning White House chief of staff Karl Rove's outing of a covert CIA agent as part of a political vendetta:

- It's the criminalization of politics
- Is this 'minor' leak really worth all this?
- Political payback is common and should not be criminalized
- Mis-speaking or mis-remembering is not a crime

Yes, the Republicans are now making light of an intentional effort to expose an undercover CIA agent, working on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, no less, while we are at war in the Middle East on that very issue.

The GOP has become the party of treason.

It would be one thing for a senior adviser to the president to put the nation's security at risk during a time of war. That could be explained as an aberration - a quite serious one, no doubt - but a fluke nonetheless. But when the president himself refuses to keep his own word about firing that aberration, and when the entire Republican party rallies around that fluke and tries to minimize what is usually a capital offense during wartime, something is seriously wrong with that party and its leadership.
Notice that no one is saying Rove "didn't do it" any more. That tells me two things: they know he did it (most of them have known for two years), and they feel sure that he's about to be indicted for it. So the denial has shifted from "he didn't do anything" to "well, yeah, he did it, but c'mon now, it wasn't really anything to get all that upset about . . . "

Can someone tell me at what point it's all right to get upset? How far does our government have to be allowed to go before we can say, shrilly, loudly, decisively, finally, "ENOUGH!"
posted by Liz @ 7:04 PM     |


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