Notice: If You Can't Read, You Will No Longer Be Allowed To Pundit!
Mona Charen, this means YOU!
Let's take a look at portions from her latest column (The Scandal Du Jour) , in which Mona claims that she's just too jaded not to be cynical about the Plame Affair, calling it "a completely manufactured scandal," (unlike, say, Monicagate, which was a REAL scandal because it involved sex and cigars!) and claims that:
The Democrats are hot for it because they believe they can use it to get Karl Rove. In their view, Rove is the genius behind the scenes, pulling President Bush's strings.
That's possible, I guess, but I think that most Democrats know getting Karl would be too much to hope for, and would be satisfied just getting Barbara Bush, who they know is the REAL genius behind the scenes, pulling George's strings and making him invade countries when he'd rather be playing video games.
But anyway, this is the part of Mona's article where we get enough evidence to revoke her Pundit License:
Wilson, who by the way is a left-leaning Democrat, has alleged that Rove is the leaker. But he has offered no proof of this whatsoever. Nor has anyone else. In fact, Novak specifically denies in his column that anyone in the White House leaked to him. It's an amazing thing to watch the capital of the free world buzzing about a "fact" that is not a fact, based only on the conjecture of a clear partisan.
Everyone. even Democrats, know that Wilson has no proof that Rove is the leaker--Wilson has said this on about every talk show in town, along with stating that he doesn't necessarily think that Rove was the actual leaker. But it wasn't Wilson's claim about Rove that caused an DOJ investigation into the leak, was it? So, let's ignore what Wilson alleges and get back to the making public of an undercover CIA employee's identity, which occurred in a column written by Bob Novak. That column is a "fact"--I think you will find millions of people who can testify to its existence. And speaking of facts, this is what Novak actually said in his most recent column (The CIA Leak), the one in which you said he "specifically denied" any White House involvement in this leak:
The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
First, he doesn't deny "that anyone in the White House leaked to him," he denies that somebody from the White House "failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn." All Novak is denying here is that he was the SAO's seventh choice as "willing pawn."
Which may even be true--Novak could have been their FIRST choice as a willing pawn, and he worked out so well that they called six other reporters after they talked to him, but got turned down. Of course, he could have been their last choice of pawns, but they didn't tell him that to spare his feelings. Actually, he can't authoritatively speak about the pawn choices at all. And while he is also denying that he WAS a pawn, that is what all the pawns want to believe, no matter how clear it is to everyone else how easily they have been manipulated to further somebody else's agenda.
And while Novak also said that the person who told him about Plame was "no partisan gunslinger," I don't think that rules out everybody in the White House (although it would tend to eliminate Rove). So, I don't think anyone who can read would take Novak's statement in his column as evidence that the WH has nothing to do with this matter.
But even though you can no longer legally pundit, Mona, let's see your next point:
Beyond that, there is the mystery of the leaker's motive. Why would the White House suppose that mentioning Wilson's wife's employer would in any way discredit him? Republicans tend to believe that working for the CIA is a credit to a person, not a disqualifier.
While any lawyer (even Ann Coulter) will tell you that you don't need to show a motive to prove somebody guilty of a crime, here a good possible motive from Howard Fineman (What Lies Behind CIA Leak Scandal):
The moment that piece hit the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was all-out war between the pro- and anti-war factions, and between the CIA and its critics. I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn't revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn't a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA's leave-Saddam-in-place team.
Fineman's thesis is that the Plame Affair is actually the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle between the Anti-war "Let's use the secular forces in Iraq as a counterweight against the radical elements" group, and the Pro-war "Destroy the Baathists before they destroy the world!" group. The CIA belonged to the former camp, and Dick Cheney to the latter. Cheney's people presumably believed that the CIA purposefully sent Wilson to Niger as part of an ongoing plan to underreport the danger of Saddam, and so felt the need to strike back against Wilson (and the CIA) when Wilson went public to deny the claim in the State of the Union Address. This makes sense to me. And it all makes me sleep a lot easier at night, knowing that they were not only WRONG about Iraq, but too stupid to even do a simple leak right.
Back to Mona:
If the accusers are making the darker allegation that Rove or whoever actually wanted to put Mrs. Wilson in physical danger, well that's a bit hard to swallow. Mrs. Wilson apparently toiled at CIA headquarters, not out in the field. More to the point, the Bush administration doesn't strike me as the Russian mafia.
I agree that there has been overreaction about the possibility of personal harm to Plame. However, I don't think anyone can say that that placing her name in public view this way has not done harm to her career or her quality of life. And I don't think anybody can say that she is anything but an innocent party in any of this. While the Russian Mafia may think that hurting innocents is business as usual, the rest of the country isn't as cynical about it as you, Mona.
And just as importantly, nobody can say that leaking her name AIDED this country and it's ability to deal with foreign weapons proliferation -- actually, all indications are that it harmed it. We may never know how much, because that will properly be classified.
And while Plame "apparently toils at CIA headquarters" now, as everyone (except Mona, apparently) knows, Plame worked "in the field" for probably 15 years, and so there was a reason for leaving her undercover when she returned to the U.S. to toil. Regardless of the leaker's intentions about harming Plame, the truth is that he did, and he also leaked classified information which could cause damage CIA sources and methods. And saddest of all, this was not done for any reason which moral people can find justifiable. So, whether or not the Bush administration strikes Mona "as the Russian mafia," somebody from that administration did use thuggish tactics worthy of that fine criminal organization when he leaked Plame's name and affiliation to Bob Novak (and indications are, to several other journalists in town).
Now let's get back to Mona, and how silly everyone's concern about this matter is:
Leave it to Washington to erupt over a trifle when a serious matter -- the possible incompetence of our intelligence services -- cries out for attention. It does now appear that we were mistaken in believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction primed and ready for use. The Democrats are trying to say that Bush lied, which is absurd. President Clinton made the identical arguments about Iraq.
Both relied, as did we all, on what our intelligence services (and other nations') were reporting. If they were wrong about this, they may be in need of a complete overhaul
LOL. Everybody, just walk away from the Plame affair--nothing to see here. No, the REAL story is that "we" were mistaken about there being WMDs in Iraq, and somebody's responsible! And since Clinton said there were WMDs in Iraq several years ago, it's absurd to believe that Bush lied to us when he said we needed to invade Iraq because those WMDs were pointed at our heads at that very minute. And while the intelligence services may have said that it looked like Saddam might have destroyed his WMDs AFTER Clinton said anything about them, the point here is that the intelligence services were somehow involved, and so we should be overhauling THEM now (especially the CIA, for daring to forward that crimes report about the leak which got everybody excited in the first place), instead of worrying about the trifling Plame matter.
I can see Mona now, energetically addressing the planes flying around the Empire State Building: "Hey, guys, ignore that giant gorilla carrying the woman up that building! No, let's go get the promoter who told us not to take flash photos of the beast, because it turned out he was right!" Way to go Mona--you may not be able to read, but you do have chutzpah.
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And briefly, here's why you can't pundit anymore, Jonah Goldberg (from Can the whining stop, please?:
Another phantasm of the liberal imagination is that they're having their patriotism "questioned" at every turn by those nasty conservatives...But these guys never provide any examples of what they're talking about.
Jonah, this is for you:
2:08:26 AM 
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