Here's my thing:

Letting the defenders of the Bush administration focus on whether Valerie Plame met the legal definition of "covert" or not is a mistake. That's not really the issue.

The issue is that the Bushies were more than willing - they were eager - to discuss sensitive national security information about an agent with reporters for no other purpose than to smear her husband and discredit his report about Niger.

That may not be illegal under the narrow statute but it sure is a terrible way to run a government. Especially for the "national security" party.

It's another page of the book that includes the US attorney scandal. National security, justice, the interests of the country continually sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. These guys make Nixon look like a choir boy.

What's disingenuous is pretending that the Bushies didn't lie, manipulate and propagandize to gin up public support for their war, which they promised would be short in duration, successful in execution and glorious in establishing democracy in the Middle East. And bloodless.

Given the full-court press they put on the Congress, the intelligence agencies, the media, the military and the public, the hysterical post-911 climate -- and it's little wonder these politicos fell into line and followed Bush/Cheney/Rummy over the cliff.

Jimmy Duncan told me about being taken into some "secure" room in the sub-basement of the White House and getting worked over by Scooter Libby (this was the first time I'd ever hear Libby's name. I went home and googled him). JJD, like his colleagues, was subjected to extreme pressure to vote for the war and told an interesting version of the "truth." And for those who were less secure in their beliefs (and their political security) than JJD, there was the vivid example of Max Cleland, who was tarred as a traitor and defeated for his alleged non-support of the military.