One of the reasons the Republicans are winning so much these days is because they're more organized. The Republican Spin Machine, spearheaded by Karl Rove, is a powerful force that encompasses not only the White House, but all the conservative pundits out there. I'm convinced that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Scarborough all get their marching orders every day from Rove's office. Whenever the administration comes under attack, all of these conservative commentators are there to sling mud at the attacker, decrying him or her as a liar, a shameless self-promoter, and probably a hater of America, as well.

Once it looked like Karl Rove might possibly be the leaky faucet in the White House plumbing, the Republican spin machine went into overdrive, lambasting both Valerie Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Plame, alleged Sean Hannity a few weeks ago on his radio show, wasn't really a "covert" agent, since everyone knew that she worked for the CIA. And besides that, she wasn't a very good agent, anyway. Her husband got his job investigating allegations of uranium sales in Niger only because of his connections to Plame, not because he was any good at his job. And by the way, he was a liar, since Niger tried a little bit to get some nuclear material from Niger. Sort of. In 1988, Iraq tried to establish commercial contacts with Niger for purchasing uranium, but Wilson regarded such a purchase as "highly unlikely."

In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As it turns out, this information was based on forged documents, and what's more, both the British and American governments knew the documents were forged. The CIA advised Bush to remove this sentence from his speech, but he kept it in, anyway. This prompted Wilson to write his op-ed in The Washington Post in July of that year.

G. Gordon Liddy -- who is of course the authority on ethics (for the uninitiated, Liddy was one of the people in charge of Nixon's "dirty tricks" campaign and went to jail for his part in the Watergate break-in) -- had this to say about Plame on the July 12 Hannity & Colmes:

But I want to point out that people keep referring to Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. That is a term of art. It is by no means established that she's an operative. An operative is someone who works for the director of operations.

My understanding is that she was in the agency at headquarters having to do with research and what have you on weapons of mass destruction. She was not an undercover operative operating out in the field, the kind of person that the statute seeks to protect.

Never mind, of course, the twenty years Plame had spent building up a network of informants. How many of them have been put in jeopardy because people know that she is a covert agent?

Back that train up!

Are we to believe that character assassinations and personal smears are to atone for what Karl Rove may have done? That being a liar or not a very good agent is on par with committing a federal crime?! I believe right now is the point at which conservative commentators have lost all connection to reality.

In deference to the law, of course, there is still a question as to whether or not any laws were broken. Was Plame really a "covert" agent? There is some question as to whether or not she was. The Intelligence Identity Protection Act of 1982, known to the ages as 50 U.S.C. 421, says the following:

Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Bob Novak was definitely "not authorized to receive classified information." Did Rove know that the information he disseminated "identifies such covert agent"? Most definitely. Was the United States "taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States"? That seems to be the question.

But Karl Rove (or someone within the administration) took it upon himself to endanger national security all in the name of "punishing" Joseph Wilson for writing an op-ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, in which he said, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." On July 14, Novak wrote an editorial in The Chicago Sun-Times identifying Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," information that was given him by "two senior administration officials."

The Republican machine is circling the wagons around Rove, trying to insulate him from attack and attempting to vilify the attackers. But the severity of Rove's crime, as compared with Plame and Wilson's poor character, makes the Republican attacks all the more trite. As Ed Schultz observed on his radio show a few days ago, Bush was quick to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when conservatives attacked him for being too moderate a choice for the Supreme Court. Where is Bush now, when his mentor, Karl Rove, is in need? Rove is in big trouble, here, and the administration's official position is to keep quiet until something can be done. Back when there was no evidence linking Rove to this situation, Scott McClellan was more than happy to exonerate him; now that it looks like he might be involved, the administration has clammed up. Because it knows that Rove is guilty? Because they have gone on record as saying they would fire whoever leaked the information? Rove is the heart and soul of the new conservative revolution in America; if the administration were to fire him, it would suffer. If it didn't stand by its pledge to fire the leaker, it would take a hit in the accountability and credibility department.

Checkmate!

UPDATE: I found a great treatment of the whole affair at QandO, which advertises itself as a libertarian blog. It's a great treatment because it's actually objective. It notes that Joseph Wilson did exaggerate some of his assertions, but at the same time, it concludes that Joe Wilson lying or exaggerating is not nearly the same as Karl Rove exposing an undercover agent:

Well, there's wrong and there's wrong isn't there? I mean, granted Joe Wilson seems to have the same relationship with the truth that I have with the CHP officer that lives next door to me. I wave when I see him in the yard.

But, really, why bring Valerie Plame into it? All Mr. Rove had to say was that the Vice President had nothing to do with Joe Wilson's Dark Journey, and the whole idea for Mr. Wilson to take a jaunt to Malaria Central came at the behest of the CIA. If Ms. Plame was a covert agent, there was no reason to mention her name.

You can call Joseph Wilson a liar all you want, but any lies he may have perpetrated aren't even in the universe of what Karl Rove may have done, and it's disingenuous at best to try and compare them.