Don't forget to guffaw or ---failing that--- snort in the face of the next un-American Leftist you hear who claims that Karl Rove has compromised our national security by discussing Valerie Plame with a reporter. Such a person comes from a long line of violent and virulent opponents of the Central Intelligence Agency and any other apparatus of our intelligence community. And such a person is a hypocrite whose only concern at this concocted scandal is not the safety of our intelligence agents, but the removal of Rove from this Administration. That is to say, these Leftist subversives have assumed what they take to be the unassailable position of defending the intelligence community against the treachery of Bu$hitler's Imperial War Machine, Inc. But that is a pose to deceive the American People into thinking that these people actually care about their own country.
Just look at who the anti-war Left nominated for President in 2004: a man who routinely voted to cut appropriations for the CIA throughout most of his Senatorial career; a man who once declared that the CIA should be dissolved; a man who never hesitated to criticize the CIA's involvement in Central America and Southeast Asia. But John Kerry is also a man who brought Joe Wilson ---a notorious liar--- into his campaign as a foreign policy adviser, as well as that great stealer and destroyer of classified documents, Sandy Berger.
I don't think there's any question that the CIA and other intelligence agencies are political organizations at some level ---and are susceptible to control from above. But they are also staffed by humans with their own particular weaknesses and even agendas. These are not some sort of vestal virgins whose identities are, per se, sacrosanct; they can compromise themselves.
Which is what Valerie Plame did. She advocated her husband's involvement in investigating a claim that she herself said was "crazy." What better way to confirm your own prejuduces than to see to it that your husband be the one to go and ask some questions? And when he gets back home, what's the plan? To undermine the very evidence of Iraq's attempts to purchase yellowcake by lying to the American People. Don't forget: all that President Bush ever claimed in his 2003 State of the Union address was that Iraq had made the attempt. And Wilson knew that. And both the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and that of Lord Butler in Great Britain confirmed that attempt beyond any reasonable doubt.
So what a strange lie Joe Wilson told and in which his wife connived. He didn't feel bound to secrecy over his trip to Niger ---and no one in the Administration or the CIA ever held him to that responsibility. Instead, he goes and talks to reporters and pundits when he sees an opportunity to take advantage. He reports, behind the mask of anonymity, the details of his time in Niger to David Corn of The Nation and Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times. Doing so, Wilson had raised the stakes ---based on these stories that he himself was moving.
And then there's the infamous New York Times op-ed piece Wilson wrote in which the lies come thick and fast. But what are facts when there's an Administration to oppose and a war to undermine? Dick Cheney didn't know anything about your stupid mission, Joe. He didn't have anything to do with it. But your wife did ---so why lie about that? Iraq did attempt to procure uranium in Niger as well as in other African countries. Didn't you know that? I think you must have. And your wife should have, being an expert of some kind on weapons of mass destruction.
But, in the end, I think it's clear that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame threw themselves a coming out party. They decided to make themselves celebrities to a cause ---and to use their resumes as immunity against any claim that they were acting on partisan motivations. But that sort of hypocrisy doesn't wash with me ---nor will it when the American People come to understand what sort of game they've been running on us.