Coup de hissy

Max Boot might want to rethink this strategy. In sneering at the "Plame platoon," Boot gives us a pretty damning list of Bush administration nastiness.

IT SEEMS like only yesterday that every high-minded politician, pundit and professional activist was in high dudgeon about the threat posed to national security by the revelation that Valerie Plame was a spook. For daring to reveal a CIA operative's name — in wartime, no less! — they wanted someone frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs, preferably headed for the gallows.

Since then there have been some considerably more serious security breaches. Major media organs have broken news about secret prisons run by the CIA, the interrogation techniques employed therein, and the use of "renditions" to capture suspects, right down to the tail numbers of covert CIA aircraft. They have also reported on a secret National Security Agency program to monitor calls and e-mails from people in the U.S. to suspected terrorists abroad, and about the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity designed to protect military bases worldwide.

Way to support your guy, Max!

Boot is either oblivious or indifferent to the critical element here: the whistleblower aspect. The "serious security breaches" he cites all pair up with egregious violations of human rights and civil liberties.

Or maybe the Boot Scale of Righteous Indignation just isn't suitable for use in complex moral situations.

So I eagerly await the righteous indignation from the Plame Platoon about the spilling of secrets in wartime and its impassioned calls for an independent counsel to prosecute the leakers. And wait … And wait …

Oh, Max, be careful what you wish for.