The fifth thing that I would do is to prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
At this point you would think that Baldwin would lash out at the leaker, Richard Armitage, or at Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for protecting Armitage by failing to prosecute him despite knowing that Armitage was the guilty one from the very beginning of his laughable investigation. Instead, Baldwin flails wildly away in all directions with the exception of the obvious one:
Yes, there are a number of other issues that would seem to be equally as important, if not more so, than the Plame case. Infrastructure, taxes, agriculture, clean water, trade deficits, election protection and on and on. But the Valerie Plame issue strikes at the very heart of what is most wrong with our current government and creates an inescapable mandate for Bush's successor. Lying is one matter. Destroying the career and good name of an intelligence officer of this country for the purposes of some sick political retribution is another. The issue is one of morality on the deepest level and it is this government's betrayal of Plame that reveals how corrupt and immoral this administration truly is.
All this outrage and Baldwin still continues to miss the obvious targets of Armitage and Fitzgerald. However, this is just a warmup for the factually inaccurate rant to follow in which Baldwin portrays Plame as a morally pure saint who would never think to act in such an "inappropriate or unprofessional" way as to, oh say, recommend that her own husband be sent to Niger:
Plame herself was innocent of any wrongdoing. There was never any intimation that she had behaved in a way that was inappropriate or unprofessional. Plame's husband did his job as a State Department official in exposing the truth about bogus reports of Iraqi access to uranium and he did his duty to his countrymen to amplify those statements in the pages of The New York Times. What did the Bush White House do? Worse, in my opinion, than any other U.S. administration had ever done before. To expose the identity of this woman was one of the greatest acts of cowardice I have ever seen in my lifetime and our nation's outrage over this must travel with any new administration in 2008.
It's probably a lost cause but in an effort to enlighten Baldwin a bit in his highly selective outrage, I cite this information from an October 25, 2005 Washington Post article, Husband Is Conspicious in Leak Case:
But the Senate committee found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson "has good relations" with Niger officials who "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame "had the idea to dispatch him" to Niger.
Of course, facts won't deter Baldwin from flailing foolishly away. He concludes his blog with another demand for the prosecution of whoever leaked (hint: Richard Armitage) the sacred name of St. Valerie:
Robert Novak will go to his grave with the disgrace of having served as the handmaiden of this heinous act, but his time has already passed. Those in government who are responsible must be prosecuted. The integrity of our government is always imperiled when men like Bush and Cheney are at the wheel. But the Plame affair puts all of us on notice. Political acts of this nature are the bailiwick of communists and fascists, not Americans whose country fights for freedom and democracy this very day in a foreign land, spending billions upon billions of dollars and sacrificing the lives of brave men and women in the process. Valerie Plame was a soldier in that war, too. We owe her all that we owe any American who serves this country.
And, Alec, you owe us an explanation of how you could write an entire rant about prosecuting whoever leaked Valerie Plame's name without once mentioning the name of the leaker, Richard Armitage, or the Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who refused to prosecute him.
