Ganging Up

"Mr. Bush's comment came nearly two years after he suggested that he would fire anyone in his administration who had knowingly leaked the identity of the operative, Valerie Wilson. . . .

"Mr. Bush neither criticized nor defended Mr. Rove. But Mr. Rove sat directly behind him as he spoke, sending a visual signal that he remained on the job and at the president's elbow, where he has been throughout Mr. Bush's political career."

Andrew Sullivan pushes back against this Wall Street Journal editorial:

"Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the 'Truth-Telling' award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

"Just a thought experiment: can you imagine the WSJ calling to give, say, Sid Blumenthal a medal for outing a CIA operative to counter misinformation in the Bosnia campaign? Fox's John Gibson echoes:

"I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him. Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And if nobody else had the cojones to do it, I'm glad Rove did -- if he did do it, and he still says he didn't.

"For the partisan right, outing CIA operatives in wartime is the patriotic thing to do. There's only one real option worthy of Bush: give Rove the Medal of Freedom."

Eugene Oregon at Demagogue indulges in a little sarcasm, methinks:

"You really have to feel for Rove - he's the victim here. Curse that nasty, nasty Matthew Cooper! What kind of a world is it where the president's top aide can't even attempt to discredit somebody by divulging damaging classified information to a reporter on double super secret background without that reporter, two years later, burning him?"

Freelance investigative reporter Murray Waas has the first report I've seen on Novak's role in the probe:

"Columnist Robert Novak provided detailed accounts to federal prosecutors of his conversations with Bush administration officials who were sources for his controversial July 11, 2003 column identifying Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to attorneys familiar with the matter. . . .

"Novak had claimed to the investigators that the Bush administration officials with whom he spoke did not identify Plame as a covert operative, and that use of the word 'operative' was his formulation and not theirs, according to those familiar with Novak's accounts to the investigators."