The Real Patriots Are Calling Out the Real Traitors

Today, as he so often does, Frank Rich asks the question that is on the tip of the national tongue, Will the real traitors please stand up?

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 says, "The public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco" on the journalists who have exposed the incompetence of our current leadership. Bush, Cheney, William Bennett, Porter Goss and the administration's mouthpieces Faux News and the Wall Street Journal have all been pillorying 'leakers' and 'irresponsible publications' for aiding and abetting the 'enemy'.

Rich says Americans are increasingly more persuaded by the message than the messengers.

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.

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.

This has been said before, and it's the message that richly deserves to be catapulted!