Monday, April 04, 2005

Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity-Part II

The Britt Hume show on Fox had a panel discussion on the Sandy Berger-classified documents fiasco. Two of the panelists seemed to believe that they could excuse him by saying he panicked and destroyed at least 3 of the documents to lessen the seriousness of the crime.

I find it hard to believe that (a) these two respected journalists and pundits would believe arguments as dumb as they were putting out and, (b) could believe anyone listening to them would be dumb enough to believe them. I guess if you say it often enough and with a straight face, you may expect some to believe stuff like that.

Handling classified documents is a serious business with very strict rules and protocols. There are fairly serious penalties for mishandling them. Surely Berger, as a former National Security Advisor, knew the rules and the penalties. You cannot "accidently" remove them, then lie about it, and then later admit you done it as "accidental". His punishment was awfully light. Berger's belief that he could do something like this with relative impunity seems to be the only thing that he was right about. Let someone not in the power elite do this, and they would spend years of hard time.

Berger purposely stole, then destroyed classified documents. He didn't accidentally put them in with other papers, he hid them in his clothes. The actions could have had no other intent than to affect the findings of the 911 Commission. How could anyone believe the tripe these two folks wanted us to believe?

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