As two people who drafted and negotiated the scope of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, we can tell you: The [Robert] Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct.

Memories being short in this country, this is unlikely to make an impression in the crowd that believes Bush personally called for Plame’s outing with the intention of ruining Joe Wilson’s career and reputation.
Piper thinks this is more relevant to the quality of editorialism than anything else. With sloppy disregard for anything remotely close to objective reporting, the instant allegations were made that Novak was a messenger of revenge, the call for investigations into the matter assumed too much and failed to dig deeply enough to find the truth. Piper:

Even in the absence of sources who can speak freely, the response from editorial pages and journalism advocacy groups to the Plame affair has been uncharacteristically sloppy. They didn’t know her CIA status, simply assuming that she must have been covert for Novak to exact this retribution on her. They never considered that Plame’s agency role might have been the decisive factor in the CIA sending Wilson, “an expert neither on nuclear weapons nor on Niger,” on the fact-finding mission (and what effort he put in there!). The editorialists and pundits who were screaming for an investigation apparently never thought that other journalists who were tangentially involved might get hauled before a grand jury and sent to jail if they refused. It’s no wonder that so few newspaper readers bother with the staff editorials if this is the average quality of research.

That about sums it up. Newspaper editorial sections have long ago abandoned reasoned debate, investigation, and discourse in favour of shouting matches and shadowy rumour mills. Someone should hire Greg–I have a feeling he’ll be a bit more partial to the actual details and less interested in the sugary crumbs that everyone else seems to fall for every time. Investigative journalist/editorialist waiting in the wings over there in Bethseda, and he’ll work for cheap!

To assert that the scientists bypassed the Baathist infrastructure, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Special Republican Guard commanders, all the while fooling Saddam is, to put it mildly, a real stretch. To this day, many still fear the consequences of cooperating with the ISG. We would need to see the detailed rationale for Dr. Kay?s conclusions on this matter to gauge if Saddam was really fooled by scientists scared to death of him and the Baath Party, or if he ran one of military history?s most successful deception operations. If he did the latter, we must also ask why he would risk the toppling of his regime, and his death or capture, over non-existent WMDs. The only alternative explanation to these two questionable scenarios is that WMD stockpiles did in fact exist, but that they have been hidden, and/or spirited out of the country.

Yes, but will anyone notice or care? I’m guessing no.

A number of reputable doctors’ groups say there is no medical reason for a pregnant woman to have a partial-birth abortion. In fact, such abortions, which are at the center of a national legal debate, can be dangerous to women who have them.
These physicians say there is no truth to the claims made by the abortion industry that the second- and third-trimester abortion method is necessary for a woman’s health.

Retired General Franks is concerned that the Constitution would not survive a WMD attack by terrorists:

…the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.
If that happens, Franks said, “… the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”
Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.
“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

It’s an interesting idea. I think it has merits.

Suppose for an instant that no weapons of mass destruction ever turn up in Iraq. Of course, WMD might well still appear, but let’s imagine that intelligence estimates were completely wrong about Saddam Hussein having an advanced program for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, as well as the missiles to carry them.
What would that imply?
President George W. Bush’s Democratic opponents say it renders the decision to go to war a “fraud” or “hyped.” But they miss the point, for there was indeed massive and undisputed evidence to indicate that the Iraqi regime was building WMD.

Read on…

For now, however, the obvious conclusion from even this interim report is that pre-emptive military action did preclude the future threat apparent in Kay’s discoveries. There is every reason to believe, based on Saddam Hussein’s past crimes and aggression, that he posed a threat to his own people, to his neighbors and, sooner or later, to those he considered his international arch-enemies, the United States and its principal allies.
President Bush, drawing the needed lessons from the catastrophic terrorist attacks of 9/11, hardly needs to apologize for acting before Saddam’s evil regime could produce a new arsenal of horror weapons.

“It’s a major setback for the governments but they will say, rightly, that they were acting on the best intelligence they had. The reality was that the WMD program was enormous. Much of it was used on Iranians and Kurds. Much was destroyed by Iraqis in the aftermath of the 1991 war and more of it was destroyed by U.N. Special Commission but that with a program of that size it’s inconceivable there isn’t somewhere, something that was left behind.”

Enjoy these links and I hope to post later tonight.

“The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent” in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning. And Saddam’s expulsion of weapons inspectors and “the behavior” of his regime “pointed to a continuing effort” to produce WMD, she added.

My, my.
She believes the evidence was sufficient enough to make a case for war. She’s actually defending Bush.
For some reason, I can only think of a number…2008.
I’ve really got to learn to suppress my cynical instincts. They’re making me so…cynical.