A Widespread Failure of Intelligence

The excuses the president's men and the talking-point commandos of the Blogosphere make about the apparent legality of his decision to sacrifice the career of Valerie Plame, and very likely the lives of CIA agents and staff in foreign nations who worked with her at the CIA front, Brewster Jennings are starkly self-serving fantasies.

There is legal culpability, and then there is personal responsibility. Republicans are all in general agreement that a lack of personal responsibility is the cause for all our social ills. Well, if poor black welfare mothers can undermine our social fabric by their lack of personal responsibility, imagine what happens when rich white republicans in elected office play games with the power we donate to them, in expectation of faithful execution of the duties of their various offices?

I do not expect to hear whining about technicalities.

This president has committed acts that are factual "High Crimes and Misdemenors." He has, in fact, used executive branch national security assets as if they were low-value poker chips. And these national security assets are, in fact, lives. Perhaps in some cases, the past tense is appropriate. But, as is proper, the CIA will neither confirm nor deny. But there may be a few more stars on the wall at Langley when it becomes possible, for reasons of national security, to admit that someone died in the service of their country due to the geopolitical ambitions of purblind fools like George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.



There is truth, and there are consequences.