Tom DeLay was on Chris Matthews’ Hardball last night and boy is he weird looking. Too tan, too slick. I wonder if he’s had work done. But he said of Valerie Plame: “She’s not a CIA agent, she’s not out in the field. She sits behind a desk in Langley.” The purpose of the law was to shield people in the field who were in harm’s way.
DeLay may be a 3-toed lizard, but he’s right about this. There is something so empty about (my side) the left’s piety on this issue, something so carney about Joe Wilson’s tears, as I’ve said before. Leaking of secrets happens all the time in Washington, it should happen. I really could care less that Plame was outed. I wonder how much she cares about it, really.
If Bush’s side had any intellectual integrity, they would have adopted the DeLay position from the start. But they didn’t. Because here Joe Wilson is right: they are viciously sanctimonious. This case became politicized—because of the right, its need to protect its image in the big carnival, “the war on terror,” and its willingness to do anything to protect the lies that led up to war. The crime was meaningless; it’s the coverup.
