William Arkin is a daily read for me. He's not a flaming liberal, but rather a defense industry insider who is pretty moderate. In today's column, he takes former intelligence officer Ray McGovern to task for his questioning of Rummy yesterday:

Anyone who has ever been in a relationship or taken Psych 101 knows that accusing someone of lying is unlikely to unleash truth-telling. And more important, it exposes the hand, and the conclusion, of the questioner.

Yesterday, protestors repeatedly interrupted the Defense Secretary during a speech at the Southern Center for International Studies, accusing Rumsfeld of "lying" to the American people.

Arkin goes on to make the case that our leaders need to be confronted with their "mistakes" not lying; that rude accusations simply drive leaders further underground.

I disagree.

Under normal circumstances with leaders of conscious, Arkin would be correct. But our current leaders are so disconnected from consientiousness that such civil tactics don't work. To be hyperbolic but accurate, it's like nicely and diplomatically asking a pedophile to stop abusing small children. The pathological nature of our leaders is beyond "treatment", it's time for something much more radical.

Which brings me back to Ray McGovern. McGovern has been writing prodigiously over the recent years about abuses in the Bush administration. His tactic of accusing Rummy of "lying" yesterday was carefully crafted political theatre (which Arkin later acknowledges), not a search for the truth from our leader. Our recent political history is rife with examples of ridiculous political theatre on the right ..... and it's worked. The left is just now catching up to the efficacy of such headline grabbing "stunts". Ask Stephen Colbert, he'll tell you all about it. Radicals on the left will say "right-on" to Ray McGovern. Moderates who haven't been paying any attention will say, "huh, what's that guy talking about"?

And that's a start.

And it works.