It's plain and simple: the person or persons who leaked information about highly classified NSA surveillance programs are traitors in a time of war and should be sought out, prosecuted and executed. President Bush is right to be outraged, and every American should feel the same way.
One Democrat said Bush was acting more like a king than a democratically elected leader. But Bush said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation more than a dozen times. That included Democrats as well as Republicans in the House and Senate, a GOP lawmaker said. ...Bush said leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told House Republicans that those informed were the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and of each chamber's intelligence committees. "They've been through the whole thing," Hoekstra said.
Congressional leaders knew about the progam and allowed it. Leaking national security secrets on a personal whim, because you happen to think the secrets aren't worth keeping, is one of the most dishonorable actions an American can take. "Unpatriotic" doesn't begin to describe the traitorous scum who betrayed the secrets entrusted to them, and The New York Times isn't much better.
Update:
Doc Rampage and Dean Esmay agree.
What do you want to bet that the leaker was not a Democrat congressman, senator or high-level staffer?
It was probably some mid-level NSA guy who has worked for the government all their life who doesn't like Bush, his administration, his policies and the people Bush appointed to run national security.
Democrats seem to think everything is political. Any concept of character seems to be so last week.
Isn't this the same kind of story that finally came out about Deep Throat? IIRC, it was a bureaucrat who had been passed over for promotion, and he wanted to get revenge.
I wrote an article here on how this should have been handled responsibly if it really is unconstitutional. Democrats could have filed suit in the FISA court seeking to restore judicial oversight. The issues could have been hashed out there, without public notice, entirely within the community of people who had clearance to know such things. It's quite likely that they would have gotten a very sympathetic hearing from the court that's getting frozen out of its oversight role.
There is no reason that an unconstitutional search program couldn't have been squashed without giving Al Queda any tips on what was going on. It not only didn't happen but the media seem entirely uninterested in why the opposition party that's so interested in hearings now was so uninterested in fixing things without doing damage to national security.