I have been waiting a few days to see if anyone of the liberals on this site made mention of the latest news about the Valerie Plame case and have been somewhat surprised to see it has not been mentioned, or if it has, I've missed it.

The headline says it all I think, "Scooter didn't do it?". For the past several months I have read here and at other sites that Cheney's right hand man was taking the fall for the Vice President, Bush or even Carl Rove, and I've heard that Scooter leaked the name himself with no regard to the national security issues that could have arose from naming such a highly valuable member of the CIA. I will not argue what her position at the time was or that her name was common knowledge around D.C. already or that her face had been printed on at least one magazine cover prior to the "outing", I will stick to those things we know are fact, something I am sure Indie will appreciate.

Val did indeed work for the CIA, had at sometime or was currently working on nuclear proliferations information and was "outed" to a reporter by someone on Capital Hill. Enter the name of the perpetrator of this great disservice, Libby, no I mean Cheney, no sorry folks I meant Bush, damnit, wrong again, let's try Armitage.

Richard Armitage has been in Washington for awhile now. He held the title of United States Deputy Secretary of State to Condi Rice's predecessor Colin Powell. He has had a distinguished carrer with both the State and Defence departments having served under a number of Presidents since 1975. Today he works for ConocoPhillips Petroleum so he must be a NeoCon, sorry kids, had to throw that line in there somewhere.

"According to an April 2006 Vanity Fair article (published March 14, 2006), former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee said in an interview "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption," though Bradlee later told the Post that he "[did] not recall making that precise statement" in the interview" courtesy of Wikipedia.

For the last 5 months speculation has surrounded Scooter Libby and the rest of the staff of the White House for leaking the name, but here we see that they already suspected it was Armitage and not Libby, Cheney or Bush or Rove who did it, so why did they continue the witch hunt? In fact they new it long before that date,

"On August 21, 2006, the Associated Press published a story that revealed Armitage met with Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003. The information came from official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act." courtesy of Wikipedia. Now it takes a long time to get FIA information, try years, so someone knew inside the S.P.'s office.

Did Bob Woodward ever tell anyone that Scooter Libby was not the source? I think he could have mentioned that at some point without breaking his confidentiality with Armitage.

The point is that the Special Prosecutor and a number of people on the hill in the capacity of reporter, editor and or publisher knew Scooter was not involved. But in the end they got him to commit perjury during an investigation he was not involved in about a subject non-related to the crime under investigation, touche. Guess our side had it coming after getting Clinton to perjure himself about sex while investigating the White Water land deals.

Are we even now? Scooter Libby had served both the President and Vice President for years as a trusted advisor and friend and now his career is over, Armitage has not been indicted and I bet he probabaly won't be either. Here's why, Valerie Plame wasn't that important to begin with or they would have swooped down on Armitage in a heartbeat once his name surfaced. Of course if he doesn't get indicted it will be blamed on the fact that he works for "Big Oil" and is in Bush's back pocket, or better, Bush made him do it to remove all suspision from the White House, that way Bush can pardon Libby for other crimes with a blanket pardon and nobody will be the wiser. 

Of course he did serve under Clinton also, so if he does not get indicted should we believe that it has anything to do with the fact that he served proudly under a Democrat President so the left will protect him? Who knows; what we do know it that over the long months that the Plame investigation has been crammed down America's collective throat Bush's poll numbers have taken a beating and many people have been convinced that Bush is in the business of "getting even" with his political enemies. Now that we have proof that the White House was not involved do you think for a minute that the left will say, "Oops, we were wrong; Libby, Cheney, Bush and Rove were clear on this one; Our bad.", I doubt it.

In the old days to make a good mystery you had to have Russians, a bomb, a CIA agent or Brit MI6 guy running around and a beautiful woman on the lamb. Today it's Big Oil, Rove, a CIA agent and an old reporter past his prime. I miss the old days too.

But what would I know; I'm just an Average American.