Leaks

Here is a good post by Larry Johnson on the kind of hypocrisy coming from the Bush Administration and their faux-patriot toadies. Says Johnson:

There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ass.

Couldn't have put it better myself. The cases he's referring to are the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative working on, of all things, Iranian WMD counter-proliferation (as in, her job was to stop Iran from getting nukes) by administration officials Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, and the alleged leaking by Mary McCarthy of the fact that the CIA is torturing detainees in secret ex-Soviet gulags in Europe.

In the former case, the Administration intentionally leaked information to the press as a shot across the bow of a man who dared to debunk the false "Saddam is seeking uranium from Niger" story that W used to scare us into Iraq. In the latter case, the administration is doggedly trying to punish others for whistleblowing on the truly wicked policies Rumsfeld put in place.

There is no moral equivalence between intimidation and whistleblowing. Anyone who makes such a claim is lying to you.

The only standard being applied here is what is good for W. What is good for W should be done, what is bad for W should be punished. That is not ethics, or morality, or "family values" (unless by "family" in the same sense as the Mafia), or responsible policy-making, or smart military policy.

It is self-preservation at any cost. Even if that cost is the rule of law. The mantra of the Bush Administration.