Wilson's a lefty and what the heck is this all about anywho?
This pretty much sums up the Republican response to The Revenge of Yellowcake. Although the "Wilson's a lefty" camp seems to be dwindling, high-minded beffudlement has a strong following.
Glen Reynolds is all over it with:
I don’t pretend to understand the Wilson affair, in which someone — perhaps at the White House, perhaps not — is accused of “outing” the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson as (perhaps) an undercover CIA operative.
and
If, as some claim, government officials deliberately broke a secret agent’s cover out of spite, then those responsible should be sacked, and perhaps even prosecuted as it may, depending on circumstances, even be a felony. At the moment, however, we really don’t know what happened.
The Wall Street Journal briefly joins in the befuddlement, before discovering-- surprise!--politics at the core of it. This, an excerpt from a WSJ editorial I pulled from
Howard Kurtz' column today:
"We've been knocking our heads trying to figure out how a minor and well-known story about an alleged CIA 'outing' has suddenly blossomed into a Beltway scandal-ette. The light bulb went off reading Monday's White House press briefing.
"Right out of the box, Helen Thomas asked if 'the president tried to find out who outed the CIA agent? And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?' OK, the point of this exercise is to get President Bush to fire someone. But whom? That answer became clear when the press corps quickly uttered, and kept uttering for nearly an hour, the name 'Karl Rove.'
"Of course! The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the President's political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target."
Because, you know, the press is always out to get this Bush administration. Damn liberal media, always giving those rotten Clintons a free ride and coming down hard on a decent man like Bush.
