White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is sending out some mixed signals about the White House’s potential involvement in the national security leaks against which Sen. Feinstein railed so vociferously earlier this week (although it seems she later succumbed to pressure to somewhat modify her statements, heh). After vehemently insisting that he isn’t going to comment on an ongoing federal investigation, Carney reverts back to the “absurd”/”preposterous” tack, making it sound as if it’s an insult of the highest order to even suggest that anyone in the White House might be involved for the sake of political gain. But, as Fox reporter Ed Henry points out, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod was insisting that there was no way the White House was involved in this debacle a few weeks back, and he’s now slightly changed his tune to insisting that there’s no way the president is involved in these leaks. Not quite the same thing, is it?

Well, I’m confused! I understand that Carney, Axelrod, et al. don’t want to allow anyone to impugn their boss’s honor (of which I remain somewhat suspicious, cough cough), but they jumped the gun in insisting that nobody in the White House — a rather large organization — could’ve been involved. Now that it’s looking more and more like that’s just what did happen, one wonders why they’re so eager to set themselves up for the embarrassment.

As commander of U.S. special forces William McRaven reminds us, we absolutely need to get to the bottom of this — national security is not something with which to play politics.

“Well we’re never happy when leaks occur, obviously,” McRaven replied. “We go to great lengths to protect our national security, very great lengths to protect our sources and methods. So all of that we guard very carefully. Unfortuantely not everyone guards that very carefully. I think what you’ve seen is the secretary and the president and Capitol Hill are taking these leaks very, very seriously, as they should. And we need to do the best we can to clamp down on it, because sooner or later it’s going to cost people their lives, or it’s going to cost us our national security. So it is important.”