The holes in Boot’s logic

Re “ ‘Plame platoon’ is AWOL on new leaks,” Opinion, Dec. 21

Any professional columnist, including Max Boot, who can write something as irrational as “although it’s treasonous for pro-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass an administration critic, it’s a public service for anti-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass the administration” and present it as a serious analogy between the Valerie Plame case “leak” and the New York Times airing of yet another Bush administration deceit on the American public does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone, including The Times. Has this man never heard of the Pentagon Papers and the Supreme Court ruling for their publication?

JUNE MAGUIRE

Mission Viejo

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Boot has clearly failed to stick to the facts. He falsely blames the media for major security leaks. The facts are that people in the U.S. government are leaking like sieves and not being indicted. This chain of events started with the leak about Valerie Plame to Robert Novak and has continued rampantly. The media have not leaked. They have printed or broadcast leaks.

The “Plame Platoon” exists only in Boot’s imagination. The leakers are real people in the U.S. government.

SHERMAN N. MULLIN

Oxnard

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Bush administration apologist Boot makes the all-too-common Washington defense that we’d rather lose civil liberties than be killed by terrorists. This “sunshine patriot” may want to consider thoughts of another era such as, “Give me liberty or give me death,” “I’d rather be dead than Red” and “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.”

We are not sheep, we are free people willing to take risks to maintain our liberties.

JEFF WEBSTER

Huntington Beach