I just spent 10 blood pressure raising minutes screaming at Melanie Sloan on Hardball. Chris was harping on why Armitage was the main leaker (anti-war, no friend of Cheney Armitage) if it was a conspiracy?
If only she could have heard me.
It makes perfect sense the Richard Armitage was the first and primary leaker. I know because the "Beltway Insiders" told me.
Newsweek
Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters,
Weekly Standard
"a slip-up by an inveterate gossip--but one that occurred alongside a concerted White House effort to undermine a critic of the war."
Now doesn't that make sense?
Let's say you work in an office, and you have a vendetta against a co-worker that took your parking space. You have something that would tarnish that person's reputation. You want to destroy them.
Where do you start the rumours? With your friend in the next office that will just make fish eyes at the co-worker and tell no one?
Nope, you tell the person that will tell everyone else in the company.
Armitage couldn't help it, he liked to have the tidbits, the "insider info".
So everything that came after that, every malicious, snide, threatening word could claim to be just echo from Armitage.
Not a concerted effort to destroy an enemy.
(cross posted eventually at Cliff Schecter)