Bush keeps pushing the case for uplifting the morale of folks on the front lines of torture by “clarifying” the Geneva Conventions. But those same people are still smarting from the exposure of a CIA agent’s identity by, it now appears, not one but three members of his administration. And ain’t nobody talking about clarifying the rules on that.
Well, actually Palm Beach Post columnist Tom Blackburn is.
Mr. Novak, that bull in the china shop, now writes that the revelation of Mr. Armitage as the source doesn’t fit “the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson.” Mr. Armitage was not a mouthpiece for Mr. Rove or Vice President Cheney.
Maybe so, but it’s not that easy. Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby did mention Ms. Plame’s name to other reporters. So maybe it wasn’t well-crafted and maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but the revelation of a covert officer’s name was not a fantasy. For a while, it seems as if “Valerie Plame is a spook, and she’s Joe Wilson’s wife” replaced “have a nice day” among Washington pleasantries. Why Ms. Plame’s name was on so many lips doesn’t alter my point. It never should have been there.
Blackburn reminds us why all this matters.
We don’t reveal CIA officers’ names because if a foreign government knows, it can find out whom the officer had contacted. The foreign government can unmask its own leaks. With some regimes, that can mean death. At least it can cost someone who helped the United States his or her job.
When that happens and is known to have happened, it makes work more difficult for other agents we have around the world. Who is going to talk to an American whose name may turn up in Mr. Novak’s column?
None of Bush’s threats and arguments whose theme is, “What are you? Stupid?” about a fair playing field for our torturers will have any credibility until he addresses the flagrant anti-American game playing among his own staff. We’re waiting.
I’m having a hard time comprehending Bush’s and his follower’s stance on changing the Geneva Convention.
For 57 years, 194 countries have abided by the Geneva Convention, none of which, through all their different leaders, have found the articles laid out in the Geneva Convention to be “vague”. Yet, G. W. Bush, a man with average intelligence at best, a history of failed polices and limited military experience, can’t seem to understand what countless others have understood to be the standard for the treatment of those captured in the time of war. This coming after it has been proven that 70 to 90% of the captives involved in the mismanaged wars Bush has started were innocents.
What really is frightening is that those defending Bush’s stance are calling those opposing it “radicals”, “mavericks” or worse. Have we come so far down the road to tyranny that a majority now believe practices that destroy liberties, dignity and basic humane treatment, that make us more like our enemies as opposed to setting us apart, are going to win us anything but the contempt of those we’re supposedly trying to win the hearts and minds of?
I pray not. For if true, America once the beacon of democracy and freedom is no more.
I’m having a hard time comprehending Bush’s and his follower’s stance on changing the Geneva Convention.
For 57 years, 194 countries have abided by the Geneva Convention, none of which, through all their different leaders, have found the articles laid out in the Geneva Convention to be “vague”. Yet, G. W. Bush, a man with average intelligence at best, a history of failed polices and limited military experience, can’t seem to understand what countless others have understood to be the standard for the treatment of those captured in the time of war. This coming after it has been proven that 70 to 90% of the captives involved in the mismanaged wars Bush has started were innocents.
What really is frightening is that those defending Bush’s stance are calling those opposing it “radicals”, “mavericks” or worse. Have we come so far down the road to tyranny that a majority now believe practices that destroy liberties, dignity and basic humane treatment, that make us more like our enemies as opposed to setting us apart, are going to win us anything but the contempt of those we’re supposedly trying to win the hearts and minds of?
I pray not. For if true, America once the beacon of democracy and freedom is no more.