then her name never would have made it into print. Joe Wilson wrote that column, not her. If they wanted to attack him on the substance of his column, then they could have done that and left it at that. But they couldn't do that because what Wilson wrote in that column was factually correct. Bush/Rove/Cheney/Libby/Armitage/Novak clearly wanted to do damage, and they did. And they got away with it.

Who cares whether she was involved in suggesting him for the trip? Isn't what he found, and didn't find when he got there what's really important here? That he found that Bush was clearly lying in that State of the Union address? That's what this is all about. Payback for Joe Wilson outing Bush as a liar.

The common denominator in Novak's zigs & zags is self-exculpation. It's crucial for his legal status that he be accepted as entirely passive in the whole info-transfer, and he adjusts his story to balance whatever's coming out from the other side (See the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Title 50. Chapter 15. Subchapter IV. Section 421 (c), which may be found at http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/protection.html .)

The contest is on: who is more passive, haphazard, and intentionless, Armitage or Novak? The dynamics of mutual response will be interesting to watch as they unfold.

The Valerie Plame leaks have the unmistakable stink of KKK Rove and Dickless Cheney. Same fingerprints as the McCain story in the 2000 S. Carolina primary, and Rove's whole sordid smarmy career. It was an attack, self-evidently, but oblique, becaus these fascist cowards don't have the guts to confront someone directly. It's of one piece with the torture policy and the secret prisons. Roaches don't like daylight.

Why do conservatives continue to defend the Administration's intentional (or, if Armitage is to be believed, reckessly negligent) leaking of a covert agent's identity? For a party obsessed with leaks and accusing anyone and everyone who disagrees of disloyalty and treason, the willingness to tolerate and defend the intentional outing of a covert agent, is to me, simply inexplicable. Regardless of whether the leak was legal or illegal, does it not show a tremendous disregard for the security of our nation and citizens for high level Administration officials to disclose the identities of covert CIA agents? In this case, the disclosure was motivated by nothing more than a desire to discredit a critic. Regardless of whether the critic deserved discrediting, does such discrediting really justify identifying a covert CIA agent? I simply cannot understand the logic that argues well Wilson is a liar (which in itself has no basis in fact), so outing is wife is justified. How are the two possibly connected? What damage does an Administration (with the highest levels of security clearance) do to our covert CIA agents by telling them, well if we don't like what someone close to you says about us, we will disclose your identity? I understand conservatives supporting the Administration, but supporting the Administration on this issue doesn't make any sense. We liberals did not defend Clinton's sexual behavior in the Oval Office. We argued that the behavior did not constitute an impeachable offense, but we did not argue that there was nothing wrong with the behavior (indeed, most Democrats actively denounced the behavior). Are conservatives simply so intellectually challenged at this point that they are willing to follow like sheep anything this Administration says or does regardless of how wrong or absurd? Nothing conservatives have done or argued over the past five years suggests otherwise.

"Since the press has turned into lobotomy patients with memory deficit disorder on the Plame case, I don't suppose it's even worthwhile to point out that the Armitage revelations of the past week or so in Isikoff and Corn's new book aren't really all that earth shattering compared with this week's bombshell: Come the spring of 2001, she was in the Counterproliferation Division's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.... Armitage may have just been a gossipy little busybody from way back, but that doesn't explain Libby and Judy and Rove and Cooper or the "two senior administration officials" who tried to get the Washington Post to print that Wilson's CIA "wife" had sent Wilson on a "boondoggle." Rove said she was "fair game." You simply cannot persuade me that every last person involved in this did not know that the head of the Joint Task Force on Iraq's WMD at the CIA in 2003 was the person they were busy making sure was publicly outed."

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=488d2a43-a63f-46dd-8269-be0c9a3967ec

All were right on-target, especially "luckycat".

What *I* am waiting for is to see how the logic-impaired Christopher Hitchens tries to explain all these latest twists and turns, justifying everything done by the Bushies against Wilson/Plame as no big deal, all purely legal, ethical and above all JUSTIFIED. Hitchens nearly ties himself into knots, drawing fantastical and fabulous conclusions on mere shreds of evidence, while ignoring the obvious truth.

I personally subscribe to Occam's Razor -- when there are competing explanations for something, the simplest explanation is almost always correct. In the Wilson/Plame case, it's that Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent was purely a matter of vengeance, and may have occurred on two separate tracks -- Armitage first, then Rove/Cheney/Libby. Just because Armitage did it FIRST doesn't mean that Rove/Cheney/Libby did NOT do it too; neither does it mean that no one did it with malice toward Wilson or Plame.

In any case, it would be refreshing to see millions more honest and patriotic Americans stand up and denounce the despicable outing of Valerie Plame.

My reading of today's Novak column left me asking a different question: If, as Novak claims, Armitage told him exactly which division of the CIA Plame worked in, then Novak would have known that meant she was undercover. He leaked her name in his column anyway. Why wasn't Novak prosecuted?