I'm a little slow. Along with everybody else in the community I've been following the PlameGate stories eagerly. But I haven't really gotten it until now. Other people may have reached these conclusions already (I'm seeing some of the same stuff from Josh Marshall), but it's taken me a while to get here.
The thing that I never understood about the whole scandal was why. From the first day I heard about it, it made no sense to me that Valerie Wilson was outed to discredit her husband in retribution for his editorial.
It just didn't fit. The m.o. of this administration has been character assassination, and there seemed to be far better and more legal ways of tarring Joe Wilson. The guy had been a public servant for decades, surely they could have drug up somebody from his past to label him as partisan and a hack. Swift-boating I would have understood. This I did not.
