The Exposure of Valerie Plame:
“I don’t go into security matters. But, you can be sure that we discussed security at great length with various agencies,” Wilson said.
And Wilson says there have been specific threats. “There have been specific threats. Beyond that, I just can’t go.”
There are some things you just don’t do, whether you have the power to do them or not. The ends can never justify the means. Many have sought to justify President’s Bush’s outing of a CIA agent through the ignoble path of press leak on the grounds that he was combating misinformation about Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of uranium and the threat he posed to the US. What a fatuous argument. Wilson wrote an op-ed and laid out his concerns about the reasons for going to war in full public view for all to see, to agree or disagree. The President who has a bully pulpit from which to preach, could have challenged Mr. Wilson directly also in full public view via press conference or op-ed of his own, well one of his writers. That would have been, as my mother-in-law likes to say, “too much like right.”
Instead, the President chose to engage in shady (some would say sh*tty) political attack because the direct honorable approach was futile. Wilson, as we all know, was right. To destroy Wilson’s wife’s career with reckless disregard for her safety, the safety of the people with whom she has done business undercover, compromising the CIA’s ability to conduct intelligence in the interest of national security, and destroying Plame’s ability to continue her essential work also in the interest of national security, all in the name of “hardball” politics was one of the most egregious acts a President can make. There is simply no excuse. And I am ashamed of Republicans who would try to excuse it. Patriotism should always trump partisanship.