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I'm quite certain that sometime in the next few days, the NY Times will continue the tradition of keeping the Valerie Blame non-story on the front pages of the paper.  After all, what's changed?  There was no story before last week and there is no story today. 

I predict one of the three following headlines will appear in liberal newspapers across the country in the coming days:

• "Richard Armitage Put Nation's Security In Jeopardy"
• "Wilson Sues Armitage For Endangering His Family"
• "Democrats, Liberals, Mainstream Media Issue Apologies to White House"

Here are some blasts from the past that I think call for apologies, retractions and a bit of shame. 

"The White House's credibility is at issue here, and I believe very clearly that Karl Rove ought to be fired," Mr. Kerry said.

"I'm nodding." - Hillary Clinton, nodding in agreement with Senator Kerry.

"We write in order to urge that you require your Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, to either come forward immediately to explain his role in the Valerie Plame matter or to resign from your Administration" - John Conyers, in a letter to the White House.

"During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning." - truthout.org 05/13/06 [just a couple of days before Rove was cleared by an investigation that already had its man]

"The Senate Democratic leader [Harry Reid] said Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove should resign because of his role in exposing an undercover CIA officer" - MSNBC

"Waiting out the prosecutorial process will merely allow the din over the scandal to escalate, providing more grist for political wrangling and erasing any hope that Congress can accomplish real work during the summer doldrums. So if Rove is smart (and we all know that he is), he will find the nearest White House exit and fight this battle without dragging Bush down with him." - The Honolulu Advertiser, "Hawaii's Newspaper".

"The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration. I trust they will follow through on this pledge" - Harry Reid

"First, in revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent, Rove either knowingly broke the law, or committed an act of gross negligence. In either case he should resign or the President should fire him.

"Second, the President failed to act upon learning that his chief political adviser blew the cover of a CIA agent." - Tom Matzzie, MoveOn PAC

"Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and a private group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, called on Bush to suspend Rove's security clearances, shutting him out of classified meetings." - MSNBC

"I believe it is time for Karl Rove to go and time for this president to live up to his promises that anyone involved in this leak would be fired" - Joe Wilson

The president did live up to his promises, Joe.  But really, in hindsight, don't these sound pretty pathetic?

So we have a conspiracy that from the very beginning, was pure BS, starting with Joe Wilson's NY Times column, the nature of his wife's position (as Ann Coulters says, Valerie Plame's top secret code name was 'Valerie Plame'), the grand White House conspiracy to pick him out of the dozens of war critics to wage a destruction campaign on, to identifying the leaker who wasn't among the list of people to resign and be fired.  Wilson and Blame accused literally everyone in the White House of trying to destroy them, yet we will hear very little of the bogus reign of terror brought on by Wilsonism (think McCarthyism, only on a profoundly stupid level).  How many lives were to be wrongly destroyed (beginning with Scooter Libby and Judith Miller) as a result of speculation and a bloated image of self-importance?

Where are the calls for the head of Richard Armitage?  After all, he "either knowingly broke the law, or committed an act of gross negligence."  The act didn't change, only the actor.  Now that a Bush critic and opposer to the Iraq War endangered the lives of every CIA agent in the world and was obviously reacting to Wilson's lame-brained scheme to draw attention to his 'covert' wife by whining in the pages of the nation's largest newspaper, what will be Armitage's punishment?  Perhaps he will be forced to read Wilson's "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity".  Or better yet, Plame's now seemingly irrelevant book due out next year, "Fair Game" (currently being supported by her equally irrelevant lawsuit against the White House or as we sometimes call it, a PR campaign).  I wonder if Crown Publishing will want their 2.5 million back now that Plame has little conspiracy left to theorize (unless she wants to blame her husband for outing her)?

Don Rumsfeld should have no worries about his job security.  I hope it will be a long time before anyone takes these people seriously when they demand that Bush administration officials be fired.

Others Blogging on this Topic:

• Michelle Malkin: David Broder calls out Rove-bashers
• It Shines For All: Time to Apologize to Rove?
• FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog: CIA Leak Case Watch: Karl Rove Owed an Apology

[Discuss the article with Otto]

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