One of the commenters at a certain ban-happy blog I visit has helpfully reproduced the whole of Nicholas Kristof's op-ed in today's New York Times so that us working class stiffs won't have to pay the Sulzbergers for the privilege.
It's pretty amazing ---and pissing off the Left to no end:
[...] I find myself repulsed by the glee that some Democrats show at the possibility of Karl Rove and Mr. Libby being dragged off in handcuffs. It was wrong for prosecutors to cook up borderline and technical indictments during the Clinton administration, and it would be just as wrong today. Absent very clear evidence of law-breaking, the White House ideologues should be ousted by voters, not by prosecutors."Borderline and technical indictments." That must be the Hutchison Defense. But Kristof even gives us some news (at least, on the latter point, to me):
The C.I.A. believed that Mrs. Wilson's identity had already been sold to the Russians by Aldrich Ames by 1994, and she had begun the process of switching to official cover as a State Department officer.I knew that first part because it's come up before that she was withdrawn from her assignments in Europe after it was realized that Ames had done a lot of damage. Very interesting.
But all of that is topped by the sheer nerve of saying the following (emphases mine):
There is, of course, plenty of evidence that White House officials behaved abominably in this affair. I'm offended by the idea of a government official secretly using the news media -- under the guise of a "former Hill staffer" -- to attack former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. That's sleazy and outrageous. But a crime?Is Kristof kidding? He's "offended" by officials "using" reporters to make their shots ---and has the balls to mention his own published stories in which Joe Wilson was using him to propagandize the readers of the New York Times?! Ha, ha, ha! I mean, what the fuck?
I'm skeptical, even though there seems to have been a coordinated White House campaign against Mr. Wilson. One indication of that coordination is that, as I've reported earlier, I received a call at the same time, in June 2003, from yet another senior White House official, who chided me for two columns in which I discussed Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger but didn't use his name.
Go on, Kristof. Tell us who was feeding you information about these yellowcake claims.
Unbelievable.