ARMITAGE CHANGES NOTHING AND EVERYTHING
Karl Rove and Lewis Libby are definitely traitors

The Nation's Washington editor David Corn, the first to realize that right-wing essayist Robert Novak's outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame might constitute a Federal crime, fills us in on what it means that the leak originated with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a man who, ostensibly, wasn't trying to do anything but gossip:

Shortly after Novak spoke with Armitage, he told Rove that he had heard that Valerie Wilson had been behind her husband's trip to Niger, and Rove said that he knew that, too. So a leak from Armitage (a war skeptic not bent on revenge against Wilson) was confirmed by Rove (a Bush defender trying to take down Wilson). And days later--before the Novak column came out--Rove told Time magazine's Matt Cooper that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and involved in his trip.

And

But because of Libby's request, a memo did circulate among State Department officials, including Armitage, that briefly mentioned Wilson's wife.

Armitage's role aside, the public record is without question: senior White House aides wanted to use Valerie Wilson's CIA employment against her husband. Rove leaked the information to Cooper, and Libby confirmed Rove's leak to Cooper. Libby also disclosed information on Wilson's wife to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

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So, just to spell this out, Valerie Plame's undercover status didn't officially change once Armitage told Novak about it. That is, leaking her name was still highly illegal. And that's exactly what Karl Rove and Lewis Libby did: they blew her cover to journalists who hadn't been in contact with Novak about the issue, and they did it before Novak's essay was published. In other words, at the point that Rove and Libby squealed, Plame's undercover status was, in reality, still a secret--only Novak, and not his readers, knew. Consequently, Rove and Libby are guilty of revealing state secrets. They're traitors.

What's worse is that they're not traitors for any nation or ideology: what they did was clearly a hatchet job; they did it for short term political gain, a ham-handed attempt to discredit and punish Plame's husband, Bush critic Joseph Wilson. Furthermore, the fact that Libby sent around the entire administration a memo revealing Plame's identity strongly suggests that they weren't simply hardcore opportunists; rather, it is almost as if they were fishing for a leak, dangling some bait and hoping that some administration half-wit would bite, which is exactly what ended up happening.

The bottom line here is that this Armitage revelation confirms everything the left has been saying for months about the case. The fact that the former Deputy Secretary of State was apparently an unwitting pawn in Rove and Libby's high stakes Machiavellian games in no way changes their guilt. In fact, it makes it all the more obvious.

Hang these motherfuckers out to dry.

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