Incompetence, or Intentional?

David Corn at The Nation comes to many of the same conclusions that I have: that the only possible explanations for the Plame outing is that either the White House was stunningly negligent and/or incompetent in handling strictly classified information, or they did it on purpose. There simply aren't any other possible choices.

And that question leads straight to Cheney himself.

Something else to keep in mind. Even after Libby was indicted, Bush didn't fire him. He allowed Libby to resign. That may seem a minor bit of semantics, but it shows yet another window into Bush's White House.

Bush has ended up, at least so far, firing no one for the leaks. Libby only left because he is facing obstruction and perjury charges -- not for his now confirmed role in leaking the name to Miller and other reporters.

And keep in mind that there is already at least one other administration official known to have "outed" Plame to reporters -- Karl Rove. If Bush fired Libby for his role in the leak, Bush would be having to explain right now why he wasn't also firing Rove for his own known role. So he couldn't fire Libby, even when it turned out that Libby was caught red-handed leaking Plame's status to Miller. He couldn't even fire Libby even after Libby was nailed for obstructing the investigation that Bush claimed the White House was fully supporting.

Bush couldn't keep even his most trifling of promises to get rid of the leakers. Even after one of them was actually indicted, he had to frame it as an unfortunate but necessary resignation, not a firing. And the only other now-publicly-known leaker still works beside him on a daily basis.

The interesting thing about the current state of the case is that we no longer even need to ask what the president knew, and when he knew it. He knows it now -- and he's defending the leakers.