Libby's Beans, Spilled

Though Libby's testimony that both Cheney and Bush authorized leaks of "certain information" contained in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 regarding Iraq's putative holdings of WMD, it still appears to be the case that this authorization did not explicitly invoke the leak of Plame's indentity. Of course, Bush critics don't believe this for a moment, while Bush supporters are busy now attacking Libby as being someone who is simply covering his own ass and pointing fingers at anything that moves.

This latest news still tends everyone toward the Plame leak. Bushies insist that the exposure of Plame's identity was far more than inconsequential, it was crucial to their self-induced belief that Joe Wilson was acting as a partisan hack. The bozos at Powerline and others like them have a demonstrated and utter lack of understanding of the word "classified," they insist on ignoring the fact that it appears clear that Bush and Cheney approved the selective leaking of classified information for political purposes, in this case, details that stoked fears about Iraq WMD. What was certainly not leaked and remains unleaked to this day, were all the concerns, caveats and strong doubts CIA officials had stated within the NIE and which Bush knew all about, through an executive summary on the document.

It is hard to know where this Libby thing is headed. I doubt this will send Fitzgerald on a tangent. He seems fairly well directed in the Plame investigation, or at least he has been so far, and I don't expect him to wander off in pursuit of these claims about Bush and Cheney regarding the NIE. But one is hard pressed not to enjoy the sight of White House rats, having been forced to abandon ship, giving it all up and hoping someone will toss them a life jacket.