[Rodeo]

Like everything else it touches, the Bush/Cheney administration has made national security political. It has used the security classification/declassification process to gain political advantage over its opponents.

Why? Because it can. Because it can make all the rules and nobody can do anything about it. "We'll tell you what we want you to know, what suits our politicall goals, and throw you in jail if you print something we don't want the public to know. We classify and declassify at our whim, and the public can do nothing about it except take what we feed them and stay in the dark about what we don't."

We can't let that happen. The president can't manipulate the flow of information to the public using or disregarding the classification process as he see fit, and then express outrage when a newspaper calls him on it.

This is a democracy. This is America. We can't let that happen.