The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Right Wing Nut House’s post, “Irony So Thick You Could Bathe In Itâ€. Second place honors went to American Future’s “Why Not Turkey?â€.
The winning non-Council post was Rants and Raves’s post on why American democracy should be forgiven its imperfections, “The Demand for Perfectionâ€. The second place non-Council post was QandO’s excellent post “Discussing the Developing Role of the Media During Times of Warâ€.
For a complete list of the results see here.
Irony so thick plays “gotcha” with the NYT and maybe the NYT is a danger, that’s a different argument. The big issue here is that Saddam’s work on nukes into the nineties lays a lot of groundwork for terrorists and rogue nations. It is a threat.
Once again the right shows indifference to real national security as it plays domestic politics.
And whether or not the left is as bad or worse is another issue. Everyone who defended the government for letting these documents out is an idiot with no concern for national security.
I know it is an aricle of faith on the right that all these rogue nations and terrorists can make sophisticated “suitcase bombs” and plutonium weapons, but thankfully even the rudiments of a uranium weapon still requires more knowledge than many have. Providing this information publicly is a no no, just as revealing the name of a CIA officer who is still clandestine (and many field officers work in Langley for periods) or who was clandestine and the revelation of whose identity may endanger those who worked with her in the past and who still may be assets. So is revealing the fact that Italian intelligence officers allowed a kidnapping in order to reduce political flack, those officers cooperated with the CIA on trust. So once agai we added to our record of betrayal.
This is the kind of “tradecraft” that has come out of this administration. It isn’t justified by the “other guy is worser! so it’s ok!”