Perfect.
Just when everyone seemed about to get bogged down in the rain forest of minutiae, batting down lies like flies, here come two articles with an aerial view of the case, putting all into perspective.
First is Frank Rich’s Sunday New York Times OpEd. As Rich says, this isn’t about Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson or even Karl Rove. It’s not about exposing a CIA agent. That’s merely the tear in the fabric, the third-rate burglary, if you will. This is about a president who knowingly took his country to war on the basis of lies and the war on the homefront against anyone and everyone who’s tried to peel back the lies and expose the truth.
Second is an oddly parallel story in the Washington Post by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. Here’s the macro view of the Wilson story, both before his name became a household word and long into the criminal investigation itself. As we’ve long suspected, Dick Cheney’s office became concerned about Joe Wilson a couple months before he went public on July 6th, 2003. From there forward you can see the coordinated campaign to destroy him as a critic, with the release of information about his wife’s identity just one part of the effort. Read the Post piece and it puts the whole matter into some clarifying perspective. (Also see this Oct. 12, 2003 article, which covers some of the same ground in greater detail.)
Later of course this must come to folks like Sen. Roberts (R) and others who covered up and bamboozled on the president’s behalf, those the president and his inner circle suborned.
