There are some things that are true, even if George Bush believes them. Tom Friedman, on "Imus in the Morning," 3/9/06
Sadly, there seems to be about 20% of the population whose BDS is so great that they cannot even reach this minimal level of sanity. How else to explain the knee-jerk assertion that if the White House says something is to be kept hidden for national security reasons, the NYT should tell us what it is?
"In my thirty-five years in foreign affairs, . . . the public disclosure of political measures or plans could [almost never] be truthfully said to jeopardize national security . . . . [O]nce [politicians] slip into the national security psychosis, they easily begin to equate . . . the nation's security with their own political power . . . ." - US Ambassador Charles Yost, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 3, 1973.
ReplyDelete"Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name." - Justice Jackson, United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950).
I dunno, TGR. Winston Churchill noted "In wartime, the truth is so precious that it must be surrounded with a bodyguard of lies." Yet we have never operated in wartime with as much openness as Bush has done. To the journalists, it's never enough. I don't see any personal political advantage to W in any of these secrecy fights.
ReplyDeleteI think the key is Yost's use of the word "political." I agree that political information is less likely to be important. But technical and intelligence info has already been danerously compromised, according to even the Demnocrats on the intelligence committees. I don't get that the newspapers get to decide what should be kept secret.
Yost worked his whole career under Democrats plus the non-ideologue Eisenhower, finishing up under Nixon. That may have tweeaked his view a bit.
The problem seems to be that many Americans seem not to believe that USA is at war. Perhaps Iraq is not that much of an enemy, but Islam is: and that is the real enemy. But - as an alien who would like to see American supremacy last a long time - I fear that the worst enemy is the enemy within.
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