Secrecy

The White House official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame did more than attack a political enemy, writes Shaun Waterman. Plame worked for the CIA "on the very issue the Bush administration says was at the heart of its decision to go to war with Iraq: weapons of mass destruction. ... Plame's outing, whomever did it, has damaged the very effort the White House said it was pursuing in going to war in the first place. A very important line has been crossed here. The integrity of the policy goals - non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction - is now seen by at least some in the White House as less important than the integrity of the message - we didn't exaggerate the case against Iraq. ... The message seems to have trumped everything, even the need to get it right in the war on terror." And as Walter Shapiro notes in USA Today, the Plame flap is only one of several scandalous recent developments related to the war in Iraq. "In the past week, three major Iraq-related developments should have, in theory, caused lasting embarrassment to the Bush administration," Shapiro writes. "But because none of these flaps touched on illegality, they have been treated as one-day stories."

"Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council today temporarily banned two popular Arab satellite television stations from covering the council's news conferences and entering government ministries because of what it called 'irresponsible activities' that threaten the country's 'democracy and stability' and encourage terrorism," the Washington Post reports. Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya were slapped with a two-week "penalty" for allegedly violating "media-conduct rules," which were outlined for the first time in today's edict.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has released an updated report chronicling the effects the war on terrorism has had on the public's right to know. The 89-page report, called "Homefront Confidential: How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know," outlines actions taken over the last two years by state and federal government agencies that limit the ability of journalists to do their jobs.

"U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared 'wounded in action,'" the Washington Post's Vernon Lobe writes. With so many troops wounded in action and attacks on soldiers becoming "commonplace," U.S. Central Command only releases the number of wounded when asked -- "making the combat injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq one of the untold stories of the war," Lobe writes.