Our society cannot survive when those who expose the truth are criminally pursued for revealing what those in power do not want the citizens of the country to know. When those in power are breaking the law, are unethical, executing illegal arrangements and violating our Constitution, it is very important that those in government and the media can protect the sources of truth when we have a government obsessed with secrecy.
The administration has made sure the Valerie Plame affair has been drawn out until the administration leaves office. There is no question George and the neocons violated a federal law by unmasking a covert operative as a form of payback to her husband Mr. Wilson, who exposed the fallacy of uranium that was supposedly pursued by Iraq.
The latest episode is our president spying on the American people without warrants. This was another classic attempt at exposure by whoever revealed the information to the NY Times. We hear the old excuse it was done for reasons of national security. Security and secrecy are a catchall. The claim of security is bogus and the underlying reason for the secrecy is to prevent embarrassment to the White House and to stop criminal charges. National Security was not harmed by the exposure of the spying; the American people were harmed.
Don’t fall for blaming the messenger. It is the administration that has broken the law in the above cases just like it has been the administration that lied about kidnapping, torture, rape, abuse and incarceration and operating secret prisons worldwide. They were the ones who held innocent people in prison for years with no charges and that included Americans.
Illegal spying and a host of other issues have to be investigated, not whistle-blowers and newspapers. Our President is determined to stop those who expose his criminal activities, the press and his ever-expanding secret government. What Bush doesn’t want you to know is that the NSA spying is only part of a secret system of extensive spying and law breaking. Our President believes he rules by executive fiat and everything is justified by his war powers. He has deliberately operated beyond the oversight of Congress and the courts, and outside the law. This is unaccountable rule based on the ideology of absolute power.
Like the American people, Congress is held in contempt and the Republicans in Congress have been models of complicity in fending off oversight, attacking other members, especially every word Republicans speak who have had the temerity to insist on oversight. Congress has never seen the like and smearing of critics that this Congress has seen. This is the sort of congressional involvement, under neocon command, that George and his CFR thugs believe fulfils the congressional mandate. Our President believes he is a dictator. He nullifies the laws that happen to be in the path of his progress. What is worse is Congress doesn’t seem to understand what he is up too. George is so obsessed with power that when he signed the military appropriations bill containing the amendment forbidding torture that he and Cheney had fought against, he added his own signing statement to it. It amounted to a waiver, authorized by him alone, that he could and would disobey this law whenever he chose. He wrote: “The Executive Branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the Constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander-in-Chief and consistent with the Constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, enhanced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.” In other words, I’ll do as I please. If one wanted to challenge the President’s interpretation he would have to first find out if the administration was complying and there is no way to do that unless we have another whistle-blower or journalist who exposes the transgression. The potential whistleblowers and journalists have already been put on notice that they put their careers at risk for speaking out in order to inform the public of what they consider wrongdoing. George and the neocons are vicious and will go to any end to punish anyone who exposes them. All contrary analysis is to be suppressed not only within government, but everywhere else.