“I’ll catch the leakers, Mr. President. And I’ll try them, convict them and execute them.”

Ironically, the letter amounted to something the Times has castigated the Bush WH for; the Times said in effect – Trust us. “How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?” By reducing the role of the president to a mere beastly “instinct” you can (at least in your mind) enhance your own. But then of course there is a tricky caveat; in order to be informed one must remain alive first.

The editors at the NYT have convinced themselves that the Bush WH is a replay of Nixon’s “imperial presidency”. Watergate informs them so strongly not even 9/11 seems to persuade them of a justification for untested executive power. Given the downturn in circulation and prestige, I don’t blame them for wanting the Nixon glory days to return. Forget Pulitzer, a presidential resignation is the mother lode of journalistic cues.

I say untested to describe some of the WH actions because obviously having not faced the kind of enemy that is Al Qaeda before, in the course of the fight the WH is going to make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. The Times seems to be unimpressed by the exigencies of preemption.

Another problem for the Times, this time the enemy’s list (unlike Nixon) does not include Ivy Leaguers or Hollywood stars. So the Times has a real problem convincing people as to the Bush danger. There are real bad guys out there. So using SWIFT to “follow the money” is not like sending the IRS after people and linking numbers found on a “safe house” to a number in Florida is not wiretapping. Iraq is not Vietnam.

BTW, Ooops goes the USA Today.

Leaks are a series of incessant drip drip drip; only after awhile it begins to have an effect. If the Times makes a mistake they won’t own up to it because they believe it will be in the interest of a bigger story; that we are headed for dictatorship. So as far as the Times is concerned, no secret is safe. They believe they are saving the country.

Years ago I read a cartoon by Alexis A Gilliland in which an American is explaining our politics to a man from Eastern Europe. “Sure, the government lies,” he says, “and the newspapers lie. But in a democracy they aren’t the same lies.

And that’s why I don’t want the Democratic Party to control the government. They would be the same lies.

The NYT and its ilk have painted themselves into a corner: one must conclude they’re either psychotic, idiots, liars or traitors.

It’s probably the last two, although the first are possible.

As mentioned, their selective indignation over the Plame affair, compared to their positive reverence for the leakers of SWIFT,and NSA taps, and CIA prisons, etc whows their rank hypocrisy.

So which is it?

Are the hypocritical because they are so nuts that they cannot see it?

Are they idiots who believe we can’t see it?

Are they liars about their motiviations ? [Absolutely]

Are they traitors? [yes - at least in effect]

You comment:

Their analysis stops dead at water’s edge, making you wonder if they ever considered how these revelations might affect our partnership with the people who run SWIFT themselves.

Perhaps they just don’t care. Certainly their actions over the last 3 years are of people who could care less what harm their actions have in the GWOT (which only exists in the minds of conservatives and red state straw suckers), or on US image or diplomacy. They just don’t care. They have more important fish to fry, Bushfish, so future mass murders of our civilians as irrelevant.

Besides, they know they can get away with it. They are the MAIN STREAM MEDIA. If the terrorists strike, we’ll hear only how Bush screwed up. We’ll see endless stories where cabbage-faced CBS fossils explore the details of how Bush screw up. Democrats will own the airwaves, treated as oracles and fonts of wisdom. People will die, and they’ll use that too against Bush.

As we used to say in the Navy, these people are lower than whalesh*t at the bottom of the ocean.

The LAT has the me too excuse, but the New York Times has it’s ass hanging out there as far as anyone can. Their protestations won’t help them if, in fact, there were a terrorist attack and the civil lawsuits come rolling in. The federal court system will have so many suits with “v Keller et al” that they will have to assign them numbers. The Times’ insurer must be quaking at the possibility.

We watched the NYT righteously belaboring the bushes for months looking for the stoolies who supposedly outed Valerie Plame. Now that their nasty little trick against the national security has blown up in their faces, we should get some signs of the press stoolies scuttling for cover, and some serious second thoughts by the media moguls on their usurpation of decisions that rightfully belong to elected reps and the Administration.

Let them wallow in their oh-so-caring guilt. Their shrinks need new Cadillacs.

If they win in November they’ll drive themselves to their rock-bottom in the ensuing two years with a plethora of nonsensical hearings and attempts at impeachment, then they’ll be gone.

It’s tempting to wish for that, as it’ll be a quicker end than is otherwise inevitable over a slightly longer term, but it’s way too dangerous for our national security in the short-term to hope for it.

God, I’d like to believe this.