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Tom Tomorrow must have foreseen today’s New York Times opinion pieces by Tierney and Kristof when he created this week’s comic.

Here’s and excerpt from Tierney’s “A Pointless Probe.” (Yes, you do have to pay to read this stuff online…sorry.)

But no one deserves to go to jail for leaking information to reporters without criminal intent. The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong.

No one deserves to be indicted on conspiracy charges for belonging to a group that believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Foreign policy mistakes are not against the law.

Mistakes? Is that what he calls the Bush Team’s purposeful use of false information to scare citizens and Congress into thinking that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, and that within months we could see a mushroom cloud in the U.S.? Is attacking anyone who dares challenge their use of what were known to be false reports by revealing the identity of a CIA agent a simple “mistake?” OOOPS! Sorry… please forgive our aduaciousness.

And here’s an excerpt from Kristof’s “Hurricane Fitzgerald.”

Mr. Fitzgerald is rumored to be considering mushier kinds of indictments, for perjury, obstruction of justice or revealing classified information.

(Snip )

My guess is that the participants in a White House senior staff meeting discussed Mr. Wilson’s trip and the charges that the administration had knowingly broadcast false information about uranium in Niger - and then decided to take the offensive. The leak of Mrs. Wilson’s identity resulted from that offensive, but it may well have been negligence rather than vengeance.

(Snip)

To me, the whisper campaign against Mr. Wilson amounts to back-stabbing politics, but not to obvious criminality. And if indictments are issued for White House officials on vague charges of revealing classified information, that will have a chilling effect on the reporting of national security issues.

(Snip)

So I find myself repulsed by the glee that some Democrats show at the possibility of Karl Rove and Mr. Libby being dragged off in handcuffs.

A chilling effect on reporting? Hmmm maybe… I’d like to think that indictments would have a chilling effect on the abuse of power by this administration. That’s what I’m concerned about: Shutting these guys down. If it takes a “mushy” indictment for perjury or obstruction of justice, so be it. And no… the charges would not fill me with “glee.” I liken the coming indictments to the Feds finally taking down Al Capone. He did not go to prison for the heinous murders he committed. He was convicted and sentenced for the rather mundane charges of tax evasion. If we have to peck away at the Bush Administration with charges of lesser crimes, well that’s a start. Those charges will eventually open the door to expose them as the most mendacious, ruthless, and corrupt administration in modern history.