> colin wrote: > > > I understand your objection to anti American sentiment. I don;t undertsand > > your obnjection to the reporting of Bush's statement that he is prepared to use > > nukes. He said ti. It is not a lie. To reprot it is not fearmongering. it > > is something we all need to know.
Kakki wrote: > To report it fourth hand, embellished, before Bush made his own statement, > from a classified Pentagon report leak given to a commentary writer at the > L.A. Times is what I objected to. I can see how, generally speaking, hearsay and embellishment are objectionable. And, clearly, it's not cool to preempt the President. But excerpts from these reports are often *intentionally* leaked as a test balloon to determine how public opinion will shake down. They want the debate to begin to see how the various political forces will react, but in a way that affords the Administration plausible deniability in the event that the nuke ideas meet mass denunciation. The L.A. Times article is a good example of just that phenomenon. Note the organizations whose experts were quoted for the piece. The game's afoot. Anyway, be assured that the whole report won't see the light of day in our lifetimes. Notice how there's no condemnation of the leak from the Administration like there was when someone from Congress leaked sensitive war policy earlier in the Bush administration? That's an earmark of a leak by design. Clinton used the leak technique masterfully during the Lewinski debacle. It's about managing expectation. But let's assume for a moment that the leak did come from a fourth hand source though. As a matter of law, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press." This provision now protects the press from all government, whether local, state or federal. The government can't impose prior restraints on the press. The media are at liberty to print anything at all. A well-known precedent for this is "Pentagon Papers" case during the Viet Nam war, U.S. v. The New York Times, where the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Times could continue to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers. Leaking portions of the nuke report can be construed as unethical (although my sense is most people would concur with colin's viewpoint), but it ain't illegal. Interestingly, the founders of the United States are said to have enacted the First Amendment to distinguish their new government from that of England, which had long censored the press and prosecuted people who criticized the Crown. The purpose of the First Amendment was "to create a fourth institution outside the government as an additional check on the three official branches" (the executive branch, the legislature and the judiciary). I think that's pretty cool and I'm psyched when the press ferrets these things out. Remember Watergate? Not to come off cynical, but I've gotta think Rumsfeld, et al figured the time is ripe for this type of nuclear defense thrust. Since 9/11 there is an underlying sense that the very existence of the country is at stake . The gloves are off and massive retaliation is getting to be a household word. Plus, the "Powell Doctrine" has always been to go into military engagement with "overwhelming force" or don't go at all. This whole is issue is a bit of a conundrum to me and I welcome the national debate before Bush makes some fool official policy. On the one hand, I pray that no nuke weapons of any kind are ever assembled again, and that we go about the business of dismantling all existing nukes worldwide with dispatch. But I fear that the reality is that nuclear technology applied to warfare scenarios is here to stay. So, doesn't it make sense to make smaller, more "tactical" nukes that would cause less collateral damage, that is to say, kill fewer and fewer people? Is making the smaller ones the only way to get the powers that be to get rid of the God-awful super-destructive ones, the ones whose effects would cause "nuclear winter" and the end of the world as we know it? Surely, that's the worse of two evils. With Bush's current job approval ratings in the polls, he could conceivably work new nukes onto the budget and into the public consciousness favorably. We'd better deal with this. -Julius
