Yeah, baby. Excellent article.

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(Also a good article by Howard Fineman in the same issue, giving some background on Rove).

Why The Leak Probe Matters
For all the complexities of the Valerie Plame case, this story is about how easy it was to get into Iraq, and how hard it will be to get out.

July 25 issue - Like a lot of President Bush's critics, I supported the Iraq war at first. Because of the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction laid out by Colin Powell, I agreed that we needed to disarm Saddam Hussein. I even think it's possible that 25 years from now, historians will conclude that the Iraq war helped accelerate the modernizing of the Middle East, even if it doesn't fully democratize it.

But if that happens, Bush might not get as much credit as he hopes, and not just because most historians, as Richard Nixon liked to say, are liberals. Bush may look bad because his leadership on Iraq has been a fiasco. He didn't plan for it: the early decisions that allowed the insurgency to get going were breathtakingly incompetent. He didn't pay for it: Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war, this one now costing nearly $1 billion a week. And most important of all, he didn't tell the American people the truth about it: taking a nation to war is the most solemn duty of a president, and he'd better make certain there's no alternative and no doubt about the evidence.

Why do I mention this now? Because for all of the complexities of the Valerie Plame case, for all the questions raised about the future of investigative journalism and the fate of the most influential aide to an American president since Louis Howe served Franklin D. Roosevelt 70 years ago, this story is fundamentally about how easy it was to get into Iraq and how hard it will be to get out.

We got in because we "cooked" the intelligence, then hyped it. That's why the "Downing Street Memo" is not a smoking gun but a big "duh." For two years we've known that senior White House officials were determined to, in the words of the British intelligence memo, "fix" the intelligence to suit their policy decisions. When someone crossed them, they would "fix" him, too, as career ambassador Joseph Wilson found when he came back from Africa with a report that threw cold water on the story that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Was Plame "fair game," as Karl Rove told Chris Matthews? George H.W. Bush didn't think so. Even after Wilson embarrassed the president publicly, Bush Sr. wrote Wilson�whom he had appointed to various ambassadorial posts�to congratulate him for his service and sympathize with him over the outing of his wife. The old man was head of the CIA in the 1970s and knows the consequences of blowing the identities of covert operatives.

But does his son? A real leader wouldn't hide behind Clintonian legalisms like "I don't want to prejudge." Even if the disclosure was unintentional and no law was broken, Rove's confirmed conduct�talking casually to two reporters without security clearances about a CIA operative�was dangerous and wrong. As GOP congressman turned talk-show host Joe Scarborough puts it, if someone in his old congressional office did what Rove unquestionably did, that someone would have been promptly fired, just as the president promised in this case. Scarborough, no longer obligated to toe the pathetic Republican Party line, says it's totally irrelevant if Joe Wilson is a preening partisan who misled investigators about the role his wife played in recommending his Niger trip. The frantic efforts of the GOP attack machine to change the subject to Wilson shows how scared Republicans are that the master of their universe will be held accountable for Rove's destructive carelessness.

To get an idea of how destructive, I talked to Melissa Mahle, a former CIA covert operative turned author whose career parallels Plame's. She explained what happens when someone's cover is blown. It isn't pretty, especially when, like Plame, you have been under "nonofficial cover" (working for a phony front company or nonprofit), which is more sensitive than "official cover" (pretending to work for another government agency). The GOP's spinners are making it seem that because Plame had a desk job in Langley at the time she was outed, she wasn't truly undercover. As Mahle says, that reflects a total ignorance about the way the CIA works. Being outed doesn't just waste millions of taxpayer dollars; it compromises hundreds of other people in the field you may have worked with in the past.

If Bush isn't a hypocrite on national security, he needs, at a minimum, to yank Rove's security clearance. "Whether you do it [discuss the identity of CIA operatives] intentionally or unintentionally, you have not met the requirements of that security clearance," Mahle told me.

The bigger question is what this scandal does to the CIA's ability to develop essential "humint" (human intelligence). Here's where the Iraq war comes in again. The sooner we beef up our intelligence, the sooner we crack the insurgency and get to bring our troops home. What does it say to the people doing the painstaking work of building those spy networks when the identity of one of their own becomes just another weapon in the partisan wars of Washington? For a smart guy, Karl Rove was awfully stupid.

Bush may have only made one smart decision his whole life, and that was having someone even more evil, twisted, and money hungry than himself be his vice president. Even the harshest Bush critics don't want him impeached because no one wants Cheney, aka the Devil's spawn and the King of Corruption, running things! I don't care if I sound outrageous and mean - I am so sick of the Bush administration's corruption I could just scream - or cry. Their crimes cannot continue! But it's like Bill Maher said, this country has f@!* up fatigue. Our tolerance for the outrageously inappropriate actions of this administration is getting pretty high. Nothing they could do would shock me at this point. blah.

Excellent article by D. Morris (who used to be an adviser to Clinton). He hits it right on the head with his assessments. 1.) Obama's poll numbers are not changing but McCain is gaining. 2.) End of July voters trusted the dems to better handle the economy by 11%, now they only trust them by 4%. 3.) Before the convention voters trusted dems to achieve energy independence by 8 points, now it's only a 2 point lead. 4.) When asked who made the smarter VP choice voters said McCain did 50 - 40%.

Key to her popularity is that she understands the average persons problems. Of the question which of the 4 candidates understands the problems of day to day life in America Palin finished first with 33%, Obama second with 32%, McCain with 17, and Biden with 10.

Worst news for Obama is when voters asked who they would consult for advise with the "toughest decision of your life" voters chose McCain over Obama 50-34.

I've been saying all along the Republicans are sweeping the nation. People are seeing through Barack's lies and false hopes. Link to the article is below so you can read for yourselves.

Cuz you know, the answer my friend (to all this brouhaha) is blowin' in the wind......

I'm heading out now for a lunch with my Harley-riding, beer-swigging, antique-collecting redneck friend. No kidding!! Strange things can happen in this big ole universe and that's just the way I like it. Actually, he quit drnking beer about 10 years ago, and quit riding the Harley after he went broke trying to sell antiques....but he's still pretty much of a redneck.

Thanks for helping me have a laugh and see some humor where I thought there was none!!

Yes, I do believe you should be able to do whatever you decide to your own body so long as others are not endangered in the process.

Well what about baby? Baby isnt endangered in the process. I would called being killed endangered. But I guess you are saying that it isnt a baby yet. I dont get that. A tadpole doesnt look like a frog but it is still a living thing. It just hasnt matured. A caterpillar isnt a butterfly but it is still alive, it just hasnt matured. So a fetus that is developing is still alive, just not matured. So because a fetus doesnt turn into something that looks like a baby in a matter of minutes or hours is okay to kill because it takes a while to mature? The video that you do not want to see shows a 19 week old baby girl. She has red hair. She is fully formed, just tiny. She was aborted by saline. The saline poured all over her body and burned her to death. She has black burn marks all over her little arms and legs and body. She is curled up like a little angle. Are you telling me that she did feel that just because no one could hear her misery? She wasnt a living thing? Sorry, but it is murder and it is wrong. You dont have to even believe in God to understand that.

teenager? Good golly, how many calamities will Mrs. Palin ignore in her own house. I don't want somewhat like that as a heartbeat from running my country.

Using the term "teabaggers" is rude? I shouldn't ridicule others with different beliefs? Give me a break. You guys have consistently ridiculed anyone who agrees with Obama time and time again on this board, as well as those who just don't agree with you. Rude? How about Kool-Aid drinkers, Obamatrons.....you know the list.

The problem with you is that you can dish it out but can't take it. If you plan on teabagging effectively you might want to consider growing a pair.

people put together for their first kid. Video of the delivery. Baby's handprint and footprint. Lock of hair from Baby's first haircut. Picture of Baby taking his first step. First tooth Baby loses, and on and on and on.....

What's the followup plan for the 200th day and the 300th? I'd like to pencil this on my calendar.