Letters to the editor

The Hayden hearings

I agree with Linda Chavez that the selection of Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA is a good political move (“Savvy selection,” Commentary, Saturday). In fact, I believe it will be viewed as a political masterstroke, as the confirmation hearings offer ample opportunity for the members of the left to paint themselves as anti-military foes of national security in the run-up to the 2006 elections.

Imagine the spectacle as Gen. Hayden sits behind his table in his dress blue uniform and calmly responds to inquisitors who loathe all things military. The thought of the despised CIA under the control of a military officer should goad them to new heights of rhetorical excess. The problems for the attackers will be that the military as a profession currently is very highly respected (far above journalists and politicians), so attacking that institution involves a certain amount of peril.

Sure to further inflame Democratic outrage is that Gen. Hayden was in charge of the National Security Agency during the warrantless wiretapping program. Though the Democratstooksignificant political advantage from the initial charges of “domestic spying,” in large part because of their willing accomplices in the media, once the public came to understand and support the program, the outrage quickly subsided, as did the vocal Democratic posturing.

But will all those Democrats who silenced their opposition to NSA wiretaps when it became politically expedient be able to hold back when one of the program’s architects is offered a promotion? The contrary signs already are there. The press already has started the attack with the “revelation” that the NSA uses phone company records to look for terrorists. Gen. Hayden is always mentioned in connection with the wiretapping, and many already have questioned whether we need a military officer in charge of a civilian intelligence agency.

Rather than taking a nonconfrontational approach to his congressional questioners, Gen. Hayden should take strong stands, especially in defending the warrantless surveillance. This is a debate that needs to be held, and publicly, so that we can establish once and for all how we will fight this war on terrorism and who will be on which side. Short, assertive sound bites will get media airtime, and the people will rally around a forceful and active defense, something the administration needs. Democratic counterarguments will only further establish the Democratic Party as the party of the “Terrorist Bill of Rights.”

If we thought the Democrats of the Judiciary Committee made themselves look bad in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., just wait for the Hayden hearings. Though the Alito hearings made them look mean-spirited and hypocritical, the Hayden hearings will paint them as anti-military and remind Americans of what they always have known: that the Democrats are weak on national security.

The knee-jerk reaction is to look at all the initial bipartisan opposition to Gen. Hayden and surmise that the president has had another Harriet Miers moment, but once the Democrats have immolated themselves in the hearings, we may hear the accusations that this was all another Karl Rove dirty trick.

PETER LOCKE

Ashburn, Va.

Malpractice lawsuits

New research published in the May 11 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine establishes that almost every medical malpractice suit filed in the United States has a meritorious basis and rejects claims that the civil justice system is inundated with frivolous lawsuits.

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