Kaplan hits it on the head

Exerpt from Marty Kaplan at huffingtonpost.com:

One by one, refugees from the Bush Administration have been telling the truth about what goes on inside there. Though Colin Powell has been doing it in a particularly craven way -- telling Washington intimates, off-the-record -- he's been doing it nevertheless. Paul O'Neill did it. Tyler Drumheller, Lawrence Wilkerson, Pentagon whistleblowers, others whose names we didn't know before they exited: they've done it.

Why do these people wait? What does it say about Washington's code of conduct that loyalty to patrons, power and Party outweighs loyalty to truth, to country, to national security, to tens of thousands of America's finest young people, now wounded or dead?

For all we know, Condi, Tony and the rest of them may already be whispering sweet somethings into Bob's ear. It may be verbal Viagra for him. But for them, it's too late. The I-fought-it-from-the-inside tales they tell Bob, or their memoirs, or their biographers, will undo no damage they have done. Their reputations, like their conscience, are already beyond salvage.