ABC’s Blotter is reporting that the CIA has been authorized for covert ops against Iran. Neo-cons across the country are probably salivating just a little bit, but I’m curious about the nature of this press release. It has a lot of complicated implications for the way our country handles other hostile nations; it, and the response, also says a lot about us as a people.

Sixty years ago, loose lips sunk ships. Today, we leak anything we can get our hands on; more often than not, it goes on the Internet first. Why do we have a vested interest in making sure Iran knows what our government is planning? Are we that confident in our own abilities that we don’t think forewarning them is an impediment to success? Or are we, as a nation, so suspicious of our own government’s motives that we feel the need to install an ankle bracelet?

Mitt Romney has one answer for us: “The media has a responsibility to police itself.” I’m not sure I’m really comfortable with the imagery of the media being policed at all, because that sets a precedent of dangerous restraint at a time when the government is playing fast and loose with civil liberties. I’m certainly not interested in hearing it from someone like Romney, who’s just using this issue to rally the base and get his name back into the papers. But it’s a typical response: the ABC site has been flooded with negative comments, either accusing them of being “un-American”, “treasonous”, or “helping our enemies”.

I don’t see the problem in that light. To start, the idea that a news report this vague will actually jeopardize future missions is ludicrous. You have to give the CIA more credit than that. But there are still plenty in this country who think the administration has shown total incompetence in its dealings with Iran. Don’t those people have a vested interest in knowing what Bush is up to? If we’d known about the Iran-Contra project in the 1980’s, would we have let it continue?

So maybe there’s another question: if we, as a nation, show such damning outrage when ABC reports on something this vague, what does that say about our trust in the government? Do we really believe, after all the scandals and failures, after the meltdown over WMDs in Iraq, that our covert agencies can be trusted to do whatever they want without some degree of media oversight? Do we have any reason to believe they’ll exercise that trust responsibly?

Either way, this definitely shows that Cheney’s losing the Iran policy battle within the White House. He’s been a fierce advocate of war against Iran right now, and I think he’s one of a handful of people left in today’s intelligentsia who cling to the illusion that our armed forces can handle another conflict without a meltdown. I’m glad to see that their “Persian project” isn’t going to be realized, even if it means they think they can sneak their way into an Iranian nuclear plant.