Not The Actions of A Loyal Bushie

I haven't said much lately about the prosecutor scandal if only because scooping up my jaw takes up too much of my time. Just when it seems things can't get any more surreal or ridiculous you get another round of Gonzales testifying or something. However, the revelation that, water is wet, bunnies are cut, and e-mails were, in fact, withheld from investigators didn't escape my notice. It seems o be a footnote in most coverage, especially in the vaunted Em Ess Em but I think it's a critical revelation.

Not only because it points to the fact that this scandal goes much, much deeper than the Department of Justice. It's just one more piece of evidence that the Republicans and the administration have been trying to establish some unholy conservative neo-bossism even as they've been trying to quiet dissent and stiffle oversight. More than that, though, what a lot of the coverage that I saw focused on was who, exactly, would be releasing this bombshell. The administration makes a virtue out of loyalty, after all, and despite all their troubles they've had shockingly few defections from within. Tennet is the only one I can think of off-hand but after accepting a Medal of Honor he's really not in the right position for his about face to be anything but tainted with opportunism. A lot of posters and commenters wondered who, exactly, would be trying to discredit the administration but would also be high placed enough to have access to the information in the first place.

My response is that's an interesting question but, ultimately, an unimportant one. As we learned from the revelation of Deep Throat's super secret identity, anyone who makes a leak doesn't have the most altruistic of motives. They've got an axe to grind or an agenda to push that's motivating them to release information to the public in so public a fashion. Their identity and their motivations are necessary to get the full story of why a leak was made. But the actual information they leaked, if true, stands irregardless of who actually revealed it. In so many words, the carrier of information isn't as relevant as the actual information itself. The knowledge that, yes, there's something really, really wrong here can be acted on without knowledge of just why that's now known.