Saturday, October 29, 2005
A Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood.
Banner day for citizens of the Commonwealth on the letters page of today's NY Times. And all from within a three-mile radius!
To the Editor:
If high-ranking officials at the White House are ultimately demonstrated to be responsible for organizing the campaign that led to the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer's identity, this is a crime far beyond the scope of Watergate, jeopardizing, as it does, the lives and careers of other agents while undermining our intelligence work.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would have to take responsibility.
Beyond the lives already lost and irrevocably altered by a war imposed on Americans by the dissemination of false information, these additional allegations, if found to be of merit, would surely mandate a serious look at the moral and legal underpinnings of our current administration.
The very values on which we pride ourselves as Americans - and which President Bush touts as those we are aiming to spread throughout the world - would be belied by such behavior.
This may be the tip of the iceberg, to be fully uncovered in the weeks and months to come.
Amy Cohen
Lexington, Mass., Oct. 28, 2005
To the Editor:
The indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr. is not the great victory for justice that some would have us believe. Nor it is a great defeat for the Bush regime, which is already so discredited by other misbehaviors. Thankfully, it does show that at least due process still can function in our dysfunctional government.
But this indictment is symptomatic of the problem that is endemic throughout the Bush regime: ideologically driven intolerance for differences of opinion, a willingness to make the facts fit the case, and a pattern of justifying the means by the ends, however much they may be at odds with the truth.
The Libby indictment is important because it is emblematic of the falsehood of a political regime that has wrapped itself in the iconic imagery of American virtue and religious values, while practicing neither.
Richard W. Mixter
Arlington, Mass., Oct. 28, 2005
To the Editor:
The complicated set of events just now coming to a climax in an indictment and investigation of White House officials was not about Valerie Plame or the use of unnamed sources in journalism. It was primarily about covering up the use of lies to lead this country into war.
Harry Remer
Medford, Mass., Oct. 28, 2005
