Friday, October 10, 2003
Stating the Obvious
As Josh Marshall is suggesting, one line emerging from the President's lickspittles is that the leaker of Valerie Plame's identity didn't know she was undercover, so there was no crime.
I suppose the obvious answer to that is, then why hasn't anyone come forward? Oh, I know: Daddy will be very mad, and the leaker will have to go sit in a corner and think real, real hard about what he has done, but if there's one thing we know about the Bushes, treason means never having to say you're sorry. Ask rehabilitated Iran-contra liar Eliot Abrams {cough}.
Perhaps the failure of the "innocent" leaker to come forward might be explained by walking through the "explanation," beanng in mind that Plame was working under nonofficial cover, meaning that as far as the world knew, she had no connection with the U.S. government whatsoever. So, the "modified limited hang-out route" would have us believe that the leaker knew that Plame's public identity was false, but somehow failed to make the inescapable inference that followed from this fact, instead concluding, in the teeth of elementary logic, that she was merely a garden-variety CIA analyst who just happened to have one of the rarest cover identities on the planet.
Alternatively, the leaker could have "learned" of Plame's CIA identity without knowing of her public one through White House gossip, which implies that the identities of deep-cover NOCs are bandied about over the water cooler at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So, either a) there is an innocent explanation that makes no sense unless one assumes the White House is criminally negligent about extremely sensitive national security matters or b) the innocent explanation is a lie. Someone should ask Scott McClellan which it is.
I suppose the obvious answer to that is, then why hasn't anyone come forward? Oh, I know: Daddy will be very mad, and the leaker will have to go sit in a corner and think real, real hard about what he has done, but if there's one thing we know about the Bushes, treason means never having to say you're sorry. Ask rehabilitated Iran-contra liar Eliot Abrams {cough}.
Perhaps the failure of the "innocent" leaker to come forward might be explained by walking through the "explanation," beanng in mind that Plame was working under nonofficial cover, meaning that as far as the world knew, she had no connection with the U.S. government whatsoever. So, the "modified limited hang-out route" would have us believe that the leaker knew that Plame's public identity was false, but somehow failed to make the inescapable inference that followed from this fact, instead concluding, in the teeth of elementary logic, that she was merely a garden-variety CIA analyst who just happened to have one of the rarest cover identities on the planet.
Alternatively, the leaker could have "learned" of Plame's CIA identity without knowing of her public one through White House gossip, which implies that the identities of deep-cover NOCs are bandied about over the water cooler at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So, either a) there is an innocent explanation that makes no sense unless one assumes the White House is criminally negligent about extremely sensitive national security matters or b) the innocent explanation is a lie. Someone should ask Scott McClellan which it is.
