Wait, Who Committed the Crime Here?

I don't mean to keep going on about this whole Sandy Berger affair, Zippergate, as it is being called by some. Frankly, I'm tired of the story and I'm ready to move on. But today's Seattle Times piece on the story on page A6 is so incredibly, monumentaly, stupendously biased I just HAVE to say something. It is truly the worst of several stories on the affair that over the course of five days have progressively gotten worse. Tomorrow's paper will no doubt suggest Bush resign or be impeached.

I suppose I should be pleased that more details of the theft have finally been printed in the Times; namely that Archive staff had suspected Berger of stealing documents in the past and they had devised a coding system to detect if anything went missing. But the Times even turns this clever, pro-active plan around to make it sound sinister. The fourth paragraph starts (and this is NOT a quote from an individual), "The notion of one of Washington's most respected foreign-policy figures being subjected to treatment that had at least a faint odor of a sting operation is a strange one."

A sting operation!?!?!? They were simply trying to enforce the rules and protect the documents. I guess the Seattle Times would have preferred that the Archive staff just turn a blind eye to the thefts and let Berger have all the documents he pleased. This is the only conclusion one can draw from the above statement based on the fact that the Times offers no alternative methodology for detecting the theft. Don't criticize a plan unless you have a better plan.

But this is only a warm-up for the attacks that follow later in the piece. Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart said, "I think he feels a sense of injustice that after building a reputation as a tireless defender of his country that many Republicans would try to assassinate his character to pursue their own ends". I had to read that twice because I frankly just couldn't believe my eyes. How many times have Democrats attempted to assassinate Bush's character? Off the top of my head, I can think of his National Guard service record being attacked, prominent Democrats have compared him to Hitler, he has been characterized over and over again as dumb, Democrats claim he could have prevented 9/11, others claim he's a bible-thumping zealot, many believe he's in the pocket of big oil, and I could go on and on. Of course, the itty bitty difference that Mr. Lockhart appears to be forgetting is that Sandy Berger, unlike Bush, ACTUALLY COMMITTED A CRIME! Call me crazy, but I'd have to say that, yes, when a crime is committed by an individual, I do begin to question that individual's character. I know, I'm weird that way.

But the real heavy artillery is brought to bare towards the end of the piece when Mr. Lockhart utters those famous words that have come to symbolize every high-level scandal since Watergate, "I think it's time for them [the Bush Administration] to come clean, say WHAT THEY KNEW, [and] WHEN THEY KNEW IT...".

From reading this, it is now obvious to me that the focus of the story should now be on the Bush White House. Forget "Zippergate", this has now turned into "Leakergate". How dare we know about this story! We should have NEVER known about this story! I mean, this is completely different than Richard Clarke's leaks because he...no wait a minute....it's different because he's not reporting a crime...no, wait a second...

Now I'm confused. Who committed the crime here, again, I forgot? Oh, yeah. That's the idea.