Credit Where Credit is Due

This morning on NPR, David Greene laid out an excellent timeline of what the Plame story is about - a timeline that ended in July 2003. Because the point of the whole situation is that the Bush Admin was lying about Iraq's nuclear program, and Wilson provided evidence to this effect. Plame's outing was pushback, and everything else is arguing over details. So the piece quotes Bush citing "the smoking gun that could be a mushroom cloud" (God, he sounds so smarmily grave when he utters that lie) and Cheney dismissing ElBaradei's conclusion that Iraq had no nukes ("has no credibility on the subject" - that's what Cheney said - about someone else!).

One of the benefits of doing the story that way is that it avoids most of the truly contentious issues - not even a Republican apologist can deny that Bush and Cheney said those things, nor could they deny that that they said them to build a case for war. It doesn't vouch for anything Wilson says, either, simply presenting the fact that he raised doubts. The story in no way hinges on Wilson's word (which should relieve Warpath Bob).

Of course, this wouldn't be complete without noting that this excellent story followed a piece in which Linda Wertheimer interviews the nonpartisan Victoria Toensing about the 1982 Intelligence Identities Act. To Toensing's credit, she quickly knocked down the notion that if Rove said "Wilson's wife" he somehow is off the hook, but she proceeded to trot out doubts that Plame was really all that covert. There's a rebuttal from someone else (who is referred to, not quoted on tape), but this is exactly why it's useless to have partisan hacks like Toensing on at all - whatever good is done from her actual expertise is washed away by her efforts to spin.