Mary Poppins has a take on relative values of this White House.

Dim wittery, dim wittery, dim wit do doo

Feed Fox news propaganda,

that's simply not new.

Dim wittery, dim wittery, dim wit do doo

If burning security serves politics,

Then that's what we'll do.

In the Bush White House where politics trumps truth in all respects including science, economics and medicine, burning a non GOP controlled security asset is like picking your nose. It's considered gross but the 'picker' isn't even aware of what they're doing. Thus spoken, feeding the Bush Cheney propaganda machine type morality level wouldn't even recognize that wrong was being perpetrated.

To coin a phrase. For these mutts, "All security is political."

The Presidency of the United States,which took years to develop, is now ineffective and useless to go with the intelligence.

The idea was to keep the fact that SITE had the video a secret. It didn't matter if it was linked to or capured, what mattered was that it not become common knowledge that the video was already in the hands of the US governemtn. Instead the administration gave it to the media which let the cat out of the bag by narrowing the potential ways that SITE could have gotten it, and apparently put a stop to that method. Personally, I think SITE is using the Bush administartion for their own purposes as nobody who can effectively gather useful intelligence could be stupid enough to trust those clowns to keep something secret.

This White House has shown a long-established pattern of burning sources. Brewster Jennings (Valerie Plame's NOC), the above-mentioned Pakistani source, and this most recent one are undoubtedly just the most glaring examples of the callous indifference to quality intel they have shown since January, 2001.

Without commenting on SITE or Katz, internal WH sources sending this leaked video to Fox News (the first destination, as revealed in the logs) was clearly a propaganda move. So what we have is, in fact, an open window into al Quaeda's operations now slammed shut for the price of a few "timely" headlines.

Which side are they on, anyway? Where do their loyalties truly lie?

I'm just as disgusted with the Bush League as anyone else, but this whole scenario doesn't scan. I'm sure SITE deals in classified information all the time, and this - obviously - was not put into that category. If they wanted to protect it, they should have classified it. Or maybe the game here was to see who the blabbermouths are, at the top of the political echelon.

The WH leaked the tape to coincide with Gen. Petreaus' testimony, remember? It was part of the PR blitz that the WH spends their hours and our dollars on to get its message out. In short, Petraus was the good cop; the tape (bin Laden) was the bad cop.

I agree.

The supreme court refuses to hear the case of the man who was "mistakenly" and secretly imprisoned for 4 months because it would require the Bush administration to reveal "state secrets". And here we have the same bunch releasing information in a way that undermined an espionage network tracking Bin Laden. Apparently outing Valerie Plame and that spy network was not enough.

The issue is that this administration is not just stupid, they are maliciously stupid. There is nothing, absolutely nothing the Congress should allow these bunch of sociopathic bozos to do in secret.

knew damn well what was going to happen, she is not that stupid.

My goodness, a genuine organization that is actually tracking terrorists. Must put a stop to that!

Of course the White House leaked the tape, thus undermining years of anti-terrorist investigations. These are the same people who outed Valerie Plame. Bush needs Bin Laden. The last thing he would want is for some damn fool organization to find him. Without Bin Laden, Bush is just another garden variety despot war criminal.... as opposed to his efforts to leave the White House with the nickname "The Anti-Christ".

"...don't live up to their principals." I think you meant

"...don't live up to their stated principals."

The actual Republican principals seem to be greed, hate, war mongering, fear mongering, politics above everything, racism, torture, lawlessness, supporting theocracy (when it results in political gain), blantant, lying and a whole host of other things to numerous to mention here. Most of these fly in the face of the teaching of the religion they state they practice. Many also fly in the face of the oath of office they took.

Lest I leave the Democratic led Congress off the hook they aren't doing so hot on that oath of office thing either. Broadly speaking, the Republicans sins are sins of commission, the Democrats sins are sins of ommission (but they seem to be acting more like Republicans every day).

Exactly right.

But this leak was hardly a blunder. Rita Katz is little more than a double agent for Israel. She gathers and distributes, or withholds and parses information as she sees fit.

I'd wager that the NSA, or DHS, and the CIA have nothing but suspicion about Rita Katz and her freelance spook-for-hire business.

Why the hell would any U.S. government intel outfit trust this obviously biased source beyond how they can use her while she is trying to use them?

In addition to that, she's a meddler in geopolitical affairs. She should be the last person to gripe that the White House blew her cover. She's an expert at going straight to the press with breaking news bits when it suits her.

Her own website contains this explanation of her services:

"The SITE Institute works regularly with and provides important and often unique information to journalists, law firms pursuing civil litigation, major corporations, law enforcement, U.S. Congress, and numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), the FBI, Customs, and the Department of Justice. SITE provides clients and interested parties with well-documented and comprehensive reports on terrorist entities and the individuals and organizations supporting them."

Notice the order of priority here: Journalists first, then lawyers, then "major corporations." Finally she lists the spook agencies. I bet that they love being so far down the list.

My take? In baseball terms, Ms. Katz just had a pitch thrown at her head to brush her back from the plate. The leak was White House payback for some previous sin. Or perhaps the NSA just doesn't like competition.