Carronade The Yankee Sailor Carronade

The Sea is a choosy mistress. She takes the men that come to her and weighs them and measures them. The ones she adores, she keeps; the ones she hates, she destroys. The rest she casts back to land. I count myself among the adored, for I am Her willing Captive.

FLASH TRAFFIC:
I've relocated to a new Yankee Sailor.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The Misplaced Priorities of the Political Class

I've noticed lots of lingering attempts to fan the political fires over the President's decision back in 2003 to release intelligence information on Iraq's pursuit of uranium from Niger. Kos is up in arms and spinning as fast as he can. AMERICAblog is busily cultivating the grass with hopes of raising political hay by arguing it was another attempt by the Administration to deceive America. And, the Washington Monthly is asking the eternal Watergate question, "what did [the President] know and when did he know it?" I even threw in my $0.02 worth and expressed some concerns when the story came to light.

So, while the veracity of the yellow cake reports are still being debated and the speculation is flying about the President's motives for the release, one thing is not being contested: the reports are old and concern events that occurred in the past. In addition, there's no indication that any genuinely sensitive sources or methods were compromised by the leak. In more plain language, it's only a big deal in certain partisan minds.

Yet, in all the commotion, no one seems to notice that the recent report of military planning for potential nuclear strikes on Iranian WMD facilities involves a genuinely illegal leak of information classified with a capital "C." Not information on something that might have happened in the past, but information disclosing what should be highly classified details of potential future military operations. Now there's something to get outraged about.