BRAVO! "IF cowardly Democrat Senators don't OPPOSE Gen. Hayden for Dir. of the CIA, THEY SHOULD BE CHARGED WITH TREASON"! Bravo! Frank Rich, NYT

 
Bravo! Thank you, so very much, Mr. Frank Rich, for saying what we all have known for so long, but none have quite yet said in the bold, forthright way you just have: THAT THOSE WHO ENABLE the Bush White House's SERIAL ABUSES against American freedoms and National Security are clear past the line of "COWARDLY, and clear into the realm of ABJECT TREASON.

<< Rich... closes with a denunciation of Gen. Michael Hayden for new CIA chief, based on his leadership at NSA. "If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install YET ANOTHER SECOND-RATE SYCOPHANT at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A.," Rich declares, "SOMEONE SHOULD CHARGE THOSE SENATORS WITH TREASON, TOO. >>

Don't forget, the basis for the Bush administration arrogance in the post 9-11 world is the pathetic and farcical 9-11 Commission whitewash, SIGNED-OFF on BY DEMOCRATS, which held NOT ONE PERSON responsible for the 9-11 debacle; in fact, in perhaps the ultimate historical example of being PROMOTED for FAILING, the Democrats FAILED to oppose the selection of Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State, despite her abject INCOMPETENCE and DECEIT leading up to the 9-11 debacle. (Ms. Rice had the temerity to say "NO ONE COULD IMAGINE terrorists using hijacked airliners as missiles, mere weeks after Al Qaida called in exactly such a threat to the Genoa G-8 economic summit in Genoa, Italy, in July of 2001... which summit Ms. Rice and President Bush both attended, and witnessed the great security, including the positioning of surface-to-air missiles around that city specifically to deter such a hijacking terror attack.)
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Frank Rich in 'NYT' Defends Newspapers, Rips 'Traitors' in Washington

By E&P Staff
Published: May 13, 2006 10:45 PM ET
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002502419

NEW YORK In his Sunday opinion column for The New York Times, Frank Rich, who returned from book leave just last week, shook off the cobwebs to launch a vigorous defense of newspapers -- and an attack on the real "traitors," including top officials.

Rich opens by recalling charges of treasons against the late New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal when he published the Pentagon Papers in 1971. "Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes," Rich observes.

Now history is repeat itself, as the Bush administration and tis defenders "are desperate to deflect blame" for the Iraq fiasco, "and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret 'black site' Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism....

"When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.

"We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin."

Rich also suggests that perhaps the recently exposed NSA database on phone records "may have more to do with monitoring 'traitors' like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists. Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent."

He closes with a denunciation of Gen. Michael Hayden for new CIA chief, based on his leadership at NSA. "If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A.," Rich declares, "someone should charge those senators with treason, too. "