A range of loyalties.

What does it mean to be loyal to an ideal? How about to the ideals of America? For Robert O’Neill, it meant whistle-blowing on the President and his Cabinet.
From Robert Reich’s piece in Newsday:
The central question his book raises isn’t really the loyalty a cabinet officer owes a president. It’s the loyalty a president and his inner circle owe to the country and to its democracy. If O’Neill is telling the truth – and we have no reason to doubt his veracity – there’s serious doubt about the loyalty of this administration to America.
Serious doubt? To me, there’s no doubt.
In Britain, a woman loyal to the ideals of peace leaked documents to the U.N. that indicated the U.S. was getting ready to wage war.
From Bob Herbert’s column in the NY Times today.
The plans, which included e-mail surveillance and taps on home and office telephones, was outlined in a highly classified National Security Agency memo. The agency, which was seeking British assistance in the project, was interested in “the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.”
Countries specifically targeted were Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The primary goal was a Security Council resolution that would give the U.S. and Britain the go-ahead for the war.

Daniel Ellsberg, who got in trouble for leaking classified documents about the the Viet Nam War, is lending his support to Katherine Gun’s case. Also from the Herbert’s piece in the Times:
What I’ve been saying since a year ago last October,” said Mr. Ellsberg, “was that I hoped that people who knew that we were being lied into a wrongful war would do what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965. And that was to go to Congress and the press with documents. Current documents. Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait years until the bombs are falling and then put out history.”
As far as I’m concerned, both Ellsberg and Gun, unlike our current American adminstration, are people of conscience, loyal to the principles of a peaceful humanity.
There is a dark side to loyalty, however, and Frank Paynter shines the spotlight on it here.

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