What's interesting to me is that when you talk about military force, we're supposed to use law-enforcement and intelligence methods instead. But if you use law-enforcement and intelligence methods, people shout "Big Brother" and the Times runs stories exposing them.
My question is, when the President said this on Sept. 21, 2001:
We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.And this:
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.
And this:
We will ask and we will need the help of police forces, intelligence service and banking systems around the world.
Exactly what did people think it meant? He was going to use telepathy to track down terror networks? As I said here (the day we decided to let our WaPo subscription lapse --the gesture may be small, but I'm not going to pay for the privilege of helping al-Qaeda drop a dirty bomb on my kids --I'll miss the comics), if we're going to let these people run our foreign policy, "editor" should be an elected position.
UPDATE: Joseph Knippenberg thinks the formerly Grey Lady's ship-sinking loose lips can be prosecuted, and rounds up the arguments. He also links to her self-serving (and weak) editorial and points out NYT's revelations are terrible for the war effort, but great for Bush --most people's reaction to the "revelations" is: "Right on!" Could Rove be behind it all? (dun-dun-DUN).
