I have to admit that I'm a little confused about this White House leak scandal that's brewing down in DC. Ann Gearhart, in this article in today's Washington Post, helps to figure out why some Bush administration officials thought that the best way to get back at an enemy was to blow his wife's cover. The leak itself doesn't make much sense to me. If the administration was upset at Joseph Wilson's comments about the supposed Iraqi pursuit of nuclear material, how does it benefit the White House to expose his wife as a CIA operative who allegedly worked on the WMD search? Does it discredit her as a secret agent, implying that she didn't do a good enough job of looking for clues? Apparently that wasn't the intent since, according to inside sources, she recommended her husband for the fact-finding trip to Niger where he couldn't find any evidence that Saddam Hussein sought African uranium for his nuclear arsenal. But it still doesn't make any sense to me to try to hurt him by leaking her name. Clearly, whatever the administration's intent was, it's backfired now. Not only have they ruined the career of an agent and done untold damage to CIA operations, they've got egg all over their faces as a result. Well done.
No comments:
Post a Comment