Selling Their Souls For Silver

June 18, 2004

James Bamford should be charged with aiding the enemy. To a lesser extent, Time magazine, the New York Post and Doubleday Books should be charged with stupidity. Although being stupid isn’t a criminal offense and is more of a societal pox-mark some sort of collective eye-roll should be headed their way from the American people. We talk a lot about outrage, this time we should be outraged.

In his new book, A Pretext for War, James Bamford, an intelligence expert so I’m told, gives not only the location of the secure facility used by Vice President Dick Cheney during times of terrorist created uncertainty but also gives details such as the number of buildings, their physical attributes and some of their components. Now, maybe I’m being just a bit on the cautious side but isn’t a secret and secure location supposed to be, well, secret and secure? Bamford may have raw data knowledge and book-smarts but his common sense seems to be a bit askew.

In this age of progressive terrorist activity it is necessary to have facilities that our country’s leadership can consider sanctuary when uncertainty arises. This is essential for a plethora of reasons and need only be explained to the terminally daft or in this case James Bamford and the doltish editors and reporters at the aforementioned publications.

It doesn’t matter whether you care for the leadership of our country at the moment or not, the need to preserve the leadership and the chain of command is essential for our governments performance in a time of crisis. All one has to do is recall the uncertainty that enveloped our country in the direct aftermath of the September 11th attacks to understand why. If you need more of an explanation you should truly consider either educating yourself on the current events of the day or opting out of exercising your right to vote this November. I’m sorry but our national security is simply too important an issue – and the most important issue in the upcoming election – to fall victim to the narcissistic agenda and political power play of the left. Not this time around.

Our electorate needs to understand the importance of our national security. They need to understand the reality of the fact that we are in just as much of a war right now as we were during World Wars I & II, The Korean War, Vietnam and the Cold War – in fact the Cold War wasn’t a shooting war, the war on terrorism is. We are fighting against those who would kill you, me, our kids, our parents, all of us just because we don’t share in their intense and dark desire to subjugate ourselves to the whims of a few power-hungry, self-proclaimed messengers of Allah. We didn’t start this conflict, and much to the chagrin of many a Democratic and Kerry operative neither did President Bush, but we have reacted to their need to slaughter us and we truly need to see this initiative through, no matter how unsavory the road.

It is equally important that those who make their living in the media, whether in the print medium or the electronic medium, understand that freedom of the press doesn’t necessarily come without an ethical obligation. While freedom of the press is a right guaranteed to us in the US Constitution it was written into the Constitution with the idea that every person protected by that right would use it while employing civic responsibility. To be sure, “we the people” – not all but many – have failed to carry that responsibility into the current era.

Today we see people like James Bamford offering the location of a secure and secret facility used by our leaders during times of national duress. He does so while hiding behind the very freedom for which his pen was to stand guard. Then we see his publishers and editors enabling him by publishing and promoting his information while employing little or no professional ethic at all, civic responsibility be damned. They do this all in the sensationalized pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Then we have reports from CentCom that on the other side of the world a western news crew appeared just moments before an ambush was to take place, this facilitated by an “anonymous tip.” This ambush was designed to kill US and Coalition forces and the news crew knew it, yet they chose to get the story rather than to help our young men and women preserve their lives, lives providing security for a budding democracy.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center has proven without a shadow of a doubt that there is a tremendous media bias to the left in this country and in the European Union (sorry MoveOn.org people, the truth is the truth although I’m not sure you would be able to spot the truth if it fell from the sky onto your heads). But employing a media bias, a political agenda as it were, is one thing, giving information to those who would gleefully saw our heads off on a tape for al Jazeera is quite another. Similarly, getting the story so that the truth can be broadcast all over the world is one thing, withholding information, or potential information, that could save the lives of your neighbor’s son or daughter is quite another. In both of these scenarios, scenarios that have come to pass, we have to ask, whose side are they on?

I touched on the very urgent need for civic responsibility in our country today. It’s needed from every one of our citizens. It’s how our Founders intended for it to be, no matter what Michael Newdow and the atheists of our country believe. To be quite sure, James Bamford and the media have forgotten the implied duty of civic responsibility altogether, if they ever knew it at all. It’s amazing that traitors are still selling their souls for silver.

Frank Salvato