Well now. Our friends at the White House seem to be starting to reap their whirlwind. The Washington Post runs a big story here about the leaking of Joseph Wilson's wife's status as a CIA operative. Wilson, perhaps you recall, was the man sent to Africa to investigate the charges that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium (the famous, Niger Yellowcake) - he came back saying the story was false - the government, not to be dissuaded from its war, ignored his report. After the war, when the press got around to asking if anything Bush had said in the last 6 months was true, Wilson came forward with this information - that he had debunked the uranium story for the government, and they ignored it. And this led to the story, in July, from Robert Novak, that Wilson was recruited for the job (investigating the Niger Yellowcake story) by his wife - who was named as a CIA agent. Novak referred to "two senior administration officials" as the source of this information. Valerie Plame (Wilson's wife), if she is CIA, was covert CIA - someone outed her - someone, in doing so, broke the law.

It's taken a couple months to really get going, but this was probably not something that would ever go away. Exposing CIA agents is not a good thing to do. It is not easy to wseep under the rug. Maybe if anything Bush and company did worked out okay, it might fade into vague obscurity, but with things continuing to stagger along (today, for example, we get the Russians nixing various Bush requests: "US bids rejected in 'frank talks'"), Bush's enemies are emboldened (and a lot of his friends drift toward the other side) - the press pays attention - and, well... It probably is inevitable with this government that when things started to go bad enough that even they have to admit it once in a while, they would start to fall on each other like rabid dogs in a cage - note that another "senior administration official" offers up the news reported in the Washington Post above:

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

Ah yes. "Wrong and a huge miscalculation" says this new "senior administration official" - whose conscience, a couple months later, seems to have noticed...

I don't mean to trash him (or her) - better late than never, of course. In any case - this is a source of great joy to the sinestral regions of the web who have been howling about it for months. And you would think that the right would themselves be dismayed that the white house could give up a CIA agent "purely and simply for revenge" (as the whistle blowing SAO put it.) It has long shocked me how willing the right (meant broadly - all those who generally support the war, from politicians and professional commentators down to my friends and relations) has been to ignore the ways Bush's administration has endangered us for their own political glory or their own (I can only call them) nefarious schemes for world domination (whatever else could be motivating this whole Iraq adventure? They've come closer and closer to admitting they conquered Iraq to serve as a kind of buffer zone - I may, if I feel political in the next couple days, track down some suitable sources for that, I've seen a couple, but I've been writing this damned note for 20 minutes and am tired of the work. No one reads this, so why kill myself?) Maybe they will start to notice - maybe they will start to care. I say this is part and parcel to their willingness to let American soldiers die in order to create photo ops and propaganda points for themselves. They will give up anything for short term political gain. It is very gratifyig to see their villainy start circling back onto them...