Reading: Frank Rich on the Times war

Perhaps, compared to Senator Orrin Hatch, who assured us last week that there was nothing more important for him and his fellow Senators to be doing in the summer of 2006 than debating an anti-flag desecration amendment, you have had something better to do in the last week or two.

Or perhaps you're simply suffering from RDC [Republican Diversionary Crisis] Syndrome (Indications: fatigue, dull aching pain behind the bridge of your nose every time the GOP brings up another pseudo-issue to draw attention away from the Iraq debacle, ringing in your ears whenever they call disagreement with them "treason," and recurring bad taste in your mouth. Consult your physician before swallowing anything.)

But otherwise, you've no doubt heard that the latest manufactured outrage sweeping Congress, DC punditocracy, and the rightwing blogs (but not really anyplace else, oddly enough) is gay marriage the death tax flag burning video games the wrong kind of immigrants coming to the US the presence/absence of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance the New York Times running a story, over the objections of the Bush administration, reporting that the US is tracking terrorist money using sophisticated online tools.

As Frank Rich points out, the story in its general outline has been out there for several years, having been given to the media by--wait for it--al Quaeda operatives? (Nope.) Former members of Iraqi intelligence? (Nope.) SMERSH? SPECTER? THRUSH? KAOS? (No, no, no, and no.)

The Bush administration? (Yup.)

So here's where we are: Bush is feigning patriotic outrage, members of Congress are calling for government retaliation against the Times, and right-wing bloggers are calling for public executions--because the Times updated, accurately, something that the Bush administration made public years ago, deliberately, about actions we're taking to fight terrorism, legally.

The only shocker in that story is, of course, that the Bush administration might not be breaking the law in this particular instance.

Rich lays out the story-behind-the-lack-of-a-story, and--surprise, surprise--it's this:

The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. It's the antithesis of everything we celebrate with the blazing lights of Independence Day.

If the stakes weren't so high, this would be laughable--the New York Times, second only to the Wall Street Journal in its record of uncritically accommodating the political and policy aims of the Bush administration, still recovering from the embarrassment of the Judith Miller/WMD/Plamegate mess, getting bitch-slapped for being traitorously opposed to the President.

It's a good reminder that when the Times bends over backwards to accommodate conservatives, their task is hopeless. Like the Log Cabin Republicans, conservatives will use them when it suits their purposes but will never accept them, never regard them with anything but contempt. As author, raconteur, and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" panelist Charles P. Pierce advises his colleagues at the Times:

Here's a hint, guys and gals. They hate you. They will always hate you. They will hate you if you help them transmit their slanders and they will hate you if you don't. Look at the last week if you don't believe that. Judy Miller's newspaper haled [sic] before the public bar for treason. You owe them nothing. You owe the country more courage than this.

All of which is a long way of saying that Rich's article is going onto the Readings list in the sidebar.