The subtitle of an editorial at Washingtonpost.com summarizes one part of the issue, but neglects the fundamental problem:
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
What is the fundamental problem?
That the integrity of those in the White House was at issue sufficiently to make plausible in the first place the accusation of someone deliberately exposing a CIA agent who was married to someone who presented a political problem as a method of retaliation.
So much for “bringing integrity back to the office of the President” which was promised back in 1999 by the campaign of George W. Bush.
More lies, but instead of ones involving peccadillos in the Oval Office, they concern the origins of an optional war which turned out to be based upon a non-existent foundation, a circumstance that allowed certain parts of the world to use the most negative interpretation of the act giving some small measure of truth to the eternal accusation of “imperialism” against the powerful such as we.
Which do you think will have longer-lasting negative consequences to the United States in the world?
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Cross-posted to Random Fate.