"...Speaking to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, commentator Tucker Carlson expressed doubts about whether the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity was damaging to national security..."

With all due respect, Mr. Carlson, YOU don't get to make that call. The national security necessity of keeping certain CIA officials' identities secret is PRESUMPTIVE for good reason. Moreover, it requires no great feat of intellect or imagination to speculate on what the Bush's administration's angry reaction -- and vigorous, immediate law enforcement actions -- would have been had the situation been the reverse, i.e., someone revealing classified information they WANTED kept under wraps.

Get serious. Mr. Fitzgerald got it exactly right during his press conference yesterday.

Here's first half-dozen paragraphs from the front page of Canada's right-leaning national daily - this from the former Bush speech writer who famously coined "axis of evil."

Full story will be up for a few days ...

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=df3dd03a-5f9d-4178-9208-263645b46a59

A turning point

David Frum

National Post

Saturday, October 29, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush's bad week may yet prove the administration's great turning point. None of the reverses need be fatal; each of them contains an opportunity to move back on to a more successful path. Everything depends on the wisdom, self-discipline, and perspective of the President himself.

Yesterday's indictments of Lewis Libby are one opportunity. For while Mr. Libby now stands in serious legal peril, the broader administration has been exonerated of intentional wrongdoing.

From the start, there have been two competing theories of what happened in the CIA leak scandal. Call them the "big" theory and the "little" theory.

According to the "big" theory, a sinister cabal of senior administration officials deceived the United States into fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq. When threatened with exposure by Ambassador Joseph Wilson, they attempted to punish him by naming his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA secret agent -- compromising the nation's security and the lives of Ms. Plame's contacts.

Under the "little" theory, there was no deception, no conspiracy, no punishment, and no compromise of security. All that happened was that Mr. Libby, as chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, called reporters to contradict a false story that Ambassador Wilson had told about his boss. A New York Times columnist had reported in May, 2003, that it was Cheney who had dispatched Mr. Wilson on his famous mission to Niger in February, 2002. Mr. Libby pointed out that it was Mr. Wilson's wife who had chosen him for the mission -- and that Mr. Wilson had grossly exaggerated his own role in the whole business. The "little" theory agrees that Mr. Libby disclosed that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA -- but it denies that she was an undercover agent or that any important secrets were compromised. If Mr. Libby had only told the truth about what had happened, there would have been no crime at all.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has now almost formally confirmed the "little" theory. There will be no more indictments -- "I can tell you that the substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded" -- which means there is no evidence of conspiracy. Nor did Mr. Libby betray national security secrets: "We're not saying that Libby knowingly outed a covert agent."

That's pretty much the end of the scandal isn't it? And that creates an opportunity for the President to put his administration back to work.

How in the world could Tucker Carlson possibly know whether outing Valerie Plame was harmful to national security?! Does he have top secret security clearances? I doubt it.

At this point, it doesn't make any difference anyway. Libby's account of his conversations with government officials and reporters regarding Valerie Wilson's identity are almost completely different, chronologically and substantively, from what actually happened. If the indictment is read carefully, it is obvious there is practically no way he could have just 'not remembered correctly.'