Reply #17: When democratic institutions fail, others take their place.

[leveymg]

That can be good or bad, depending upon the circumstances and the outcomes. Right now, I think we have one chance, and that is that the best people within the uniformed military and the intelligence community are willing to take extraorinary risks in order to uphold their oaths to protect the Constitution.

That is the last, best chance for the survival of humanity, today.

But, if we can see through our worst fears, there is reason for hope, and this is it. Neither the Plame nor the Franklin (OSP-AIPAC) prosecutions would have been allowed to get this far, unless both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the career CIA allowed it, if not demanded it.

Given the common element of both investigations -- the prosecution of those within the Administration who employed espionage and fraud to push the U.S. into an unnecessary war -- I do not believe that another fraudulent, and even more costly, war in the Middle East will be tolerated.

I think we have reason to expect that the officers will do their duty, which is to protect the country from its enemies, both foreign and domestic. That enemy is not us, and they know it.