Interesting take that I haven't heard regarding Rove outing a CIA operative. The writer says he thinks Rove should go to jail, but not for being a leaker.
From
CounterPunch
Liberals and the CIA
Rove Agency
By JOSHUA FRANK
So it looks as if Karl Rove actually did it. President Bush's top strategist purportedly leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the press in an attempt to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had criticized the Bush Administration's faulty claim that Saddam Hussein was going nuclear.
The latest revelation that Karl Rove served as Matt Cooper's inside guy thrills many liberals in Washington. Senator John Kerry and Hilary Clinton, along with several other top Democrats, have all called on Bush to fire Rove for threatening our national security by outing a CIA operative. David Corn declared in The Nation that Rove acted "in a reckless and cavalier fashion, ignoring national security interests to score a political point against a policy foe." The White House press corps is also up in arms over Press Secretary Scott McClellan's blatant lies, as he assures them repeatedly that the leak did not originate within the White House.
It's all a bunch of liberal hoopla, however. Despite Rove's political motivations for leaking Plame to the press, we shouldn't be so quick to dub him a traitor, or even call for his firing over the leak. Sure Rove should be hauled off to the pen for helping propagate Bush's illegal war on Iraq -- but he should also be commended for outing an undercover CIA agent, no matter how inadvertent his good deed may have been.
That's right. I don't share the liberals' admiration for the Central Intelligence Agency. But I think it is important to note the broader context of the alleged Rove leak. Unlike most mindless punditry's take on the matter, Rove's move was not just a personal tit-for-tat aimed at Joseph Wilson, but part of a larger White House effort to counter increasing CIA rumblings about the short sightedness of Bush's Iraq endeavor. Thus some might say that Plame should not have been leaked to the press. But the fact is the CIA, besides its potential "good deeds," has for far too long served as the front for US supremacy across the globe, as well as at home.
Read the rest HERE!