Did Cheney Tell Libby to Do It?

Said Rove last night (here's the transcript): "The person who revealed Valerie Wilson Plame's identity is Richard Armitage. I think it is revealing in the book that Scott devotes 34 pages to me on this incident with Wilson and Plame and devotes one and a half sentences to the guy we now know leaked Valerie Plame's identity, not only to Robert Novak, but two weeks before that, also to Bob Woodward. I did not. And I don't remember the conversation to this day with Matt Cooper, but Matt Cooper's own notes show that the conversation I had with him on Friday, several days after Novak has already told me that he's writing this story, and I know that it's going to appear the following week, Matt Cooper's own notes showed that I had an off-the-record conversation with him in response to a phone call to me in which I tried to discourage him about writing anything at all about Wilson."

McClellan and John Stewart

McClellan also appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. Here's the video, parts one and two.

Stewart: "Are they destroying you in the way that they thought they would? Does this miss the McClellan touch? . . . How would you destroy you?"

Stewart rolled tape of former McClellan colleagues saying he "doesn't sound like Scott."

Stewart: "This is amazing. Their argument here is: You're not you."

McClellan: "I'm finally speaking for myself, but I'm not me? If they look at the book and get a chance to read it, they'll see who I am."

Stewart pushed back at McClellan's insistence that the White House's propaganda campaign for the war nevertheless did not amount to willful deception. As one example, they discussed the White House's decision not to talk about the possible financial costs of the war.

Stewart: "Isn't that the definition of deception? . . . If they sat in a room and said: 'When we go to campaign for this war, let's not tell them how much it costs. Let's not mention it.' That's a sin of omission. That's a lie."

McClellan: "Yeah, there's really no difference whether it's deliberate or intentional, or it's ---

Stewart: "No no no no no. There is."

McClellan: "Well, they're both problematic in their own way. . . . "

Stewart: "They're not both problematic. One is homicide. The other is involuntary manslaughter."