Editor & Publisher reports that the Valerie Plame scandal has just gotten worse for the Bush Administration.
NEW YORK What was Valerie Plame working on at the CIA when she was outed by administraton officials and columnist Robert Novak? MSNBC's David Schuster on Monday said he had confirmed an earlier report that she was helping to keep track of Iran's nuclear activity--not a front and center issue for the White House.
That's right. Not only was Plame monitoring Iran's nuke program, but the administration didn't think Iran was all that important. So they pulled an agent away from a real threat in order to throw her under the bus over a fake one. Great.
That's what gets me about this administration, they have no long game. They seem to exist entirely in the moment, completely unaware that actions taken now have consequences later. They value snap decisions over planning. This is not a White House that does that planning thing - it's not manly.
So, once again, the administration is caught up in the inevitable result of pretending the future doesn't exist. It happened with Katrina, with Iraq, and now, with Iran. It's like they don't seem to realize that the ball is always in play.
On last night's Hardball, MSNBC correspondent Shuster reported that intelligence sources told him thatr Wilson was part of an operation three years ago "tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran." And the sources asserted, he said, "that when here Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well."
And that's why he's tanking in the polls right now. Everything they've done has been designed to affect the next poll. It's better to get a bump than to actually be effective - or maybe they think it's the same thing. Either way, we're paying for it every day.
--Wisco
