Yet while Mr. West has expressed real remorse for his misbehavior at the MTV Music Awards, Mr. Wilson has swiftly gone beyond a quick apology to cash in on his historic insult to the president of the United States. The South Carolina conservative’s political consultants have raised upward of a million dollars from donors across the country who want to express solidarity with him for blurting “You lie!” on the House floor—and they’re peddling T-shirts emblazoned “I’m With Joe Wilson.” Those same consultants are promoting his noxious outburst as an act of patriotism.

Nothing surprising there to anyone familiar with the Wilson entourage and outlook. The consultant behind the excitable right-wing congressman is Richard Quinn, long a central figure in both South Carolina Republican politics and the “neo-Confederate” movement, notably as editor and publisher of a periodical called The Southern Partisan. As a staunch defender of the antebellum way of life, he has advocated displaying Confederate symbols on public property and opposed the Martin Luther King holiday, and sought to restore the reputation of slave owners.

Long before Mr. Quinn started selling those Joe Wilson tees, his magazine used to market T-shirts denigrating Abraham Lincoln, which displayed a portrait of him above the slogan “Sic Semper Tyrannis”—the phrase shouted by John Wilkes Booth after shooting the Civil War president. No doubt Mr. Quinn considered that to be an expression of “patriotism,” too, although not to the United States of America.

It is not accidental that Mr. Wilson is a client of the Quinn firm (which has also represented Arizona Senator John McCain, much to his shame). The South Carolina congressman is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, once a relatively harmless organization of nostalgic Southerners that has been transformed into a virulently racist outfit in recent years. Before his election to Congress, Mr. Wilson was among the minority of state legislators in South Carolina who fought to the bitter end for the right to fly a Confederate flag over the statehouse—a campaign in which those die-hards enjoyed the support of Mr. Quinn’s fund-raising and publicity apparatus.

This is the ugly underside of the farthest right-wing elements of the Republican Party. Promoting Joe Wilson as a symbol of the G.O.P. is a dangerous game, but it is nothing new for a political leadership that has been flirting with the neo-Confederates for decades now. Ever since Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party in 1948, what was once the party of Lincoln has veered closer and closer to the ideology of his assassins.

Even now, Republican leaders in Washington—presumably including the black chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele—make common cause with the neo-Confederates. They pretend not to notice the Dixie flags, the habitual expressions of racism and bigotry or the poisonous attitude toward Lincoln, King and the other saviors of the nation. And they pretend that the politicians who stoke these smoldering hatreds are loyal to the same ideals as the rest of us.

Such weird political configurations also appeared briefly during the candidacy of Sarah Palin, whose career in Alaska was promoted by the secessionist party there. That strange interlude—which also embarrassed Mr. McCain—is also an artifact of the Republican attraction to the extreme right.

Whether this extremism will help the party regain a majority next year, or hinder its prospects, isn’t yet clear. The House Republicans are staking their reputation on support for Mr. Wilson against a censure resolution. Fortunately for the people of South Carolina, Mr. Wilson will have to face Democrat Rob Miller, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war whose service to country and political maturity are not in question. Early polls after the Wilson disgrace suggested that the outcome of that contest is anything but assured for the incumbent.

As I watched the TV talking heads dissect the event, one resident wizard made the point that the atmosphere in the Congress was relatively tame compared to Prime Minister’s questions in the British Parliament. While that is true, it sort of misses the point. In Britain the head of government is the Prime Minister, but the head of state is the Queen. In Israel and many other Parliamentary democracies the head of state is the President and the head of government is the Prime Minister. In the United States the President is both the head of government and the head of state. This means that President Obama’s role is not simply to manage the federal bureaucracy, but to represent and symbolize the nation as well. He not only cuts the budget, he is expected to cut ribbons too. In our democracy there is no King to symbolize the nation’s history or culture. The President plays that role. He is both Prime Minister and King.

I should mention that this does not make me a monarchist, or President Obama a monarch. Last week I was quoted making the same point in a wonderful article by the Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck on heckling in Congress, and I have received a pile of e-mails explaining that America has no king. That is clear, but the function of head of state and head of government is often split in most political systems, just not in ours.
 
This combination can be confusing, and at times Presidents have tried to take advantage of the dual role by arguing that those who disagree with their policy positions are unpatriotic. That is of course completely false. A President’s policies are fair game. In fact, it’s also OK to call the President a liar. It’s just probably not something you should scream at him while he is speaking to a joint session of Congress in front of 30 million TV viewers.

This has been a nasty political summer as evidenced by disruptions at Town Hall Meetings on health policy and the absurd attack on the President for advising school kids to stay in school, work hard and do their homework.  While many of us long for civility and respect in our political debates, it’s important to remember that American political history has not always been characterized by mild discussion and broad consensus. Back in 1804, at the start of the republic, Alexander Hamilton died after being shot by Aaron Burr- possibly a low point for political civility in the early days of our poltical system.  In the mid-19th century a complete breakdown of our political process led to the Civil War.  According to the web site of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, political dialogue in the House was particularly contentious in the years leading up to that horrific war, In fact,

“The most infamous floor brawl in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives erupted as Members debated Kansas’s pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution late into the night of February 5-6 [1858]. Shortly after 1 A.M., Pennsylvania Republican Galusha Grow and South Carolina Democrat Laurence Keitt exchanged insults, then blows….More than 50 Members joined the melee.” 
 
The 20th century was no picnic either. More than a few of us remember the discord at the -1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago as well as the many moments in the 1960’s when orderly and symbolic civil disobedience descended into disruption and violence.

In a world made smaller by low-cost information and communication technology and made more dangerous by constant advances in the technology of destruction, civility and peaceful methods of dispute resolution become more and more important.  I write this on September 11, 2009 and have been reminded all day of the presence of evil in the world and the importance of civility and the rule of law in modern life. In his famous June 1963 American University speech on the path to world peace, John Kennedy spoke about the need for nations to develop safe ways to resolve sharp differences and live in peace. JFK urged tolerance and civility when he said:

“So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

Health care, climate change, the economy and issues of war and peace dominate national policy debates in our nation’s capital. There is a great deal of political power and a boatload of money at stake for our Representatives in Washington, their constituents back home and powerful stakeholders. The presence of these powerful forces and vested interests make it even more important that the discussion be civil and that all parties be respectful of each other. Despite the attention he has garnered from his shout at the President, I am certain that Representative Wilson wishes he hadn’t pushed the “send” button the other night. My hope is that his fifteen minutes of national fame does not inspire others to mimic his unfortunate outburst.

Wilson issued his response on, fittingly enough, Fox News Sunday: “I've apologized one time. The apology was accepted by the president, by the vice president, who I know. I am not apologizing again.”

“This is playing politics,” he added.

Well, on that point he’s certainly right, although it’s hardly a revelation. Both chambers of Congress (but particularly the House) love doing this: an individual or group from one side of the aisle says or does something controversial, and the other side uses a condemnatory resolution to claim the high ground—and keep the story alive.

This is how, for instance, the House ended up devoting valuable time two Septembers ago to a Republican-sponsored resolution that chastised the liberal group MoveOn for a newspaper ad that attacked General David Petraeus. Democrats at first tried to keep the resolution from the floor, but when the G.O.P. circumnavigated them, Democrats (for the most part) gave in and voted for the resolution, not wanting to give their opponents any more ammunition.

Now, it’s the Democrats’ turn. Wilson’s behavior during Obama’s speech was almost universally offensive to the independent voters both parties covet; even in Wilson’s conservative South Carolina district, public opinion was running more than two-to-one against his outburst as of last Friday.

And Wilson, after initially apologizing last Wednesday night (an apology, as he noted on Sunday, that Obama was quick to accept), has almost been daring Democrats to act. Instead of keeping quiet in shame or simply repeating his apology, Wilson launched a mini-media tour that called into question the depth and sincerity of his contrition and began raising big bucks from sympathizers on the right. This gave Democrats the latitude they needed to issue their ultimatum.

What will be interesting to watch this week is how the House G.O.P. leadership handles this. Here, a parallel can be drawn to the 2006 case of Cynthia McKinney, then a Democratic congresswoman from Georgia, who had an altercation with a police officer in the Longfellow House Office Building.

It began when the officer, who was manning a magnetometer that tourists and other visitors must pass through, didn’t recognize McKinney as she walked around the machine (member of Congress don’t have to pas through it). He told her to stop. She refused. He tried to restrain her. She began shouting, hit him with her cell phone, and later pronounced herself a victim of racial profiling.

Like the Wilson saga, the story became a national sensation, with public opinion breaking strongly against McKinney. Republicans, recognizing the same political opening Democrats now want to exploit, castigated her and introduced a resolution praising the Capitol police force for its service and professionalism.

“'I don't think it's fair to attack the Capitol Police, and I think it's time that we show our support for them,” North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry, who introduced the resolution, declared.

Democrats saw no political value in sticking up for McKinney or fighting the resolution. For one thing, McKinney was already a loner in the caucus, having been driven out of office in a contentious 2002 primary only to return in an upset two years later. She had no relationship with then-minority leader Nancy Pelosi (who, in a break from her customary secrecy, leaked word to reporters that she hadn’t even spoken with McKinney in months).

So even though racial profiling was and is a sensitive issue to a major component of the Democratic base, Pelosi had cover to throw McKinney under the bus, since even members of the Congressional Black Caucus—most notably Charlie Rangel and John Lewis—had little regard for McKinney and weren’t willing to expend capital sticking up for her.

Ultimately, Pelosi enlisted several C.B.C. members to demand an apology on the House floor from McKinney, who finally complied a week after the incident with the officer. During her apology, she also announced that she’d support the G.O.P.’s resolution, which then passed unanimously. From a national standpoint, the issue was then dropped and forgotten (although McKinney lost her seat to Hank Johnson in that summer’s Democratic primary largely because of it).

Wilson, though, occupies a more secure, mainstream place within the House G.O.P. ranks. And conservative activists, egged on by Rush Limbaugh and other media voices, have rallied around him. Republican leaders don’t have the breathing room to deal with Wilson that Democrats enjoyed with McKinney.

This explains why, for example, Minority Leader John Boehner has made sure to vouch for the argument, such as it is, that Wilson was trying to express with his outburst. Wilson may be causing Republicans headaches when it comes to their image with independent voters, but to give him the McKinney treatment would be to risk an insurrection from what today is a particularly angry and exercised base.

Most likely, G.O.P. leaders will simply decry the Democratic resolution as a transparently political act that’s unnecessary because Wilson has already apologized. This probably won’t cause them much (more) grief with independent voters, but Wilson’s sudden sacred cow status is yet another small illustration of how a shrunken, irrational base is preventing the Republican Party from rebuilding itself.

For one thing, the poll was conducted by the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling. That doesn’t mean the numbers are cooked, but it would be more significant if the figures were being released by a nonpartisan pollster.

But let’s take the PPP findings at face value. Maybe Wilson, who was re-elected last fall over Miller by a 54-46 percent margin, really does now trail 44 to 43 percent. That’s not exactly hard to believe, given the coast-to-coast grief Wilson has faced for shouting “You lie!” at President Obama on Wednesday.

Even so, there’s reason to believe that Miller’s surge is mainly a temporary reaction to what has to be the worst press Wilson has ever received, and that it will begin to ebb once the media moves on in a few days. After all, there will be about 5,400 other Major Controversies between now and November 2010, so by then Wilson’s outburst probably won’t resonate with anything near the force it now does.

Democrats are making much of the fact that Wilson was held to 54 percent in 2008—as if the 46 percent that Miller received in that race represents his starting point for the 2010 rematch. But 2010 will be a much different political year, in ways that are almost all bad for Democrats.

There won’t be a Republican White House to rail against and the Bush bogeyman will be gone. Instead, the midterm election will be a referendum on Obama’s first two years, which—historically speaking—is almost automatically bad news for Democrats. And if the economy is still feeble (or if it still feels feeble to voters, which it probably will), the damage could be worse than usual.

Plus, the Democrats’ performance in South Carolina—and in Wilson’s own solidly Republican 2^nd District—in ’08 was helped by the presence of Obama, who stirred unusually high turnout among blacks and younger voters. Try as they might, Democrats will not be able to replicate that dynamic in ’10.

The perfect storm metaphor is overused, but it applies in describing the conditions for Democrats in ‘08. Everything that could go right went right—and in Wilson’s district, that translated into 46 percent of the vote for the Democratic House challenger.

Wilson’s eruption will cost him, to be sure. Miller has already raised more than $750,000 from it, so he’ll be able to run a credible campaign. But Wilson is also taking in big money from the right, which is mobilizing in response to the Democrats’ outrage. In the end, whatever damage to Wilson remains from this week will probably be canceled out by the altered dynamics of next fall’s political landscape.

A helpful parallel can be drawn to Ohio’s “Mean” Jean Schmidt, the Republican congresswoman who most recently made news for telling a birther that she agrees with her. It was only the latest in a string of embarrassments for Schmidt since her election to the House in a 2005 special election.

Her lowest moment, though, came in December 2005, when in a debate over the Iraq war she essentially called John Murtha, a decorated former Marine, a coward. A fight nearly broke on the floor of the House and Schmidt was forced to apologize. It made national news. Just like now, Democrats smelled blood. But even in 2006 and 2008, about as favorable years as Democrats will ever see, they couldn’t quite beat her. Her district was just too Republican.

Wilson’s district is slightly less Republican, but 2010 will be more favorable to the G.O.P. than ’06 and ’08 were. In other words, if Mean Jean managed to survive, Joe Wilson probably will too.

What Messrs. Corn and Isikoff reveal, among other things, is that the first official to reveal Valerie Wilson’s covert identity as a C.I.A. operative to columnist Robert Novak in June 2003 was Richard Armitage, who then served as Deputy Secretary of State. Unlike other Bush administration figures who were involved in leaking Ms. Wilson’s identity, such as Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Mr. Armitage was known to be unenthusiastic about the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

From those two facts, numerous pundits and talking heads have deduced that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were guiltless, that there was no White House effort to expose Ms. Wilson, and that the entire leak investigation was a partisan witch hunt and perhaps an abuse of discretion by the special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald. The same pundits now proclaim that Mr. Armitage’s minor role somehow proves the White House didn’t seek to punish Valerie Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, for his decision to publicly debunk the Presidential misuse of dubious intelligence from Niger concerning Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase yellowcake uranium.

But whatever Mr. Armitage did, or says he did, in no way alters what Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby did in the days that followed, nor does it change their intentions. It’s a simple concept—two people or more can commit a similar act for entirely different reasons—but evidently it has flummoxed the great minds of contemporary journalism.

In this instance, Mr. Armitage says he was merely “gossiping” with Mr. Novak, who seems to have been primed to question him about the Wilson affair. But both Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby sought to undermine Joe Wilson’s credibility—and perhaps to victimize him and his wife—by planting information about Valerie Wilson with two reporters. Mr. Rove gave that information to Time reporter Matt Cooper, who got confirmation from Mr. Libby. And Mr. Libby provided the same poisonous tip to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Almost from the beginning of his investigation in December 2003, Mr. Fitzgerald has known about the blabby Armitage, who at least came clean promptly. But Mr. Fitzgerald, a Bush appointee of impeccable reputation, understood that the Armitage confession was of limited relevance—and it didn’t discourage the special counsel from conducting a thorough probe that uncovered a secretive, high-level effort, emanating from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, to discredit Joe Wilson and to use his wife’s two decades of undercover work for her country as a weapon against him. Indeed, the only reason Mr. Armitage knew about Valerie Wilson was that he had read a negative dossier on Joe Wilson prepared at the behest of Mr. Libby.

On his blog, Mr. Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation, recently responded to the opinion-makers who were so eager to misuse his reporting to exonerate the White House. “As Hubris will make clear,” he wrote, “Rove’s leak (to Robert Novak and Matt Cooper) and Libby’s leak (to Judith Miller and Cooper) were part of a campaign to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson. That’s no conspiracy theory. The available evidence proves this point.”

According to an article published by Mr. Corn in The Nation on Sept. 5, the available evidence also proves that Valerie Wilson was not only a genuine C.I.A. undercover officer, but that she was in charge of agency operations seeking proof of Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Specifically, she ran the Joint Task Force on Iraq, which was part of the Counterproliferation Division of the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Operations. She worked overseas, including trips to Jordan and other theatres of operations, using a “nonofficial cover.” By disclosing her identity, the Bush officials ruined her career and endangered the sources and methods she had used in the President’s service. Hubris also suggests strongly that her alleged role in dispatching her husband to Niger has been exaggerated.

All this is quite contrary to the dominant right-wing perspective in Washington. So now we will see whether those who were so thrilled by the Armitage scoop are honest enough to confront more significant and embarrassing facts. But the fundamental issues have not changed.

Rather than confront Mr. Wilson’s accusations directly, the White House went after him and his wife—and then lied about the involvement of its senior officials in disclosing her identity. The perpetrators of these unpatriotic partisan acts have yet to be punished, and the President, as usual, has failed to uphold his own professed ethical standards. It is a simple matter, and yet still too challenging for the national press to understand.

I thought the ambassador's name was Joe Wilson, or as his book, The Politics of Truth, is bylined, Joseph Wilson. I was curious about who all the other Joseph C. Wilsons were and I leafed through the book. Nothing. He says his mother's family was a big political family in California, but only says that his parents were "expatriate journalists and authors," though his father also "had a couple of jobs bringing American products to European customers, but the enterprises didn't work out." That's not very forthcoming. I have the strong sense that Wilson, former ski bum and diplomat, is a rich kid.

Yes, he was right about Niger, and we can hope this case brings Karl Rove and Dick Cheney down—but what sort of packaging is going on? Could the truthteller have a little more plain dealing about his own background?

That said, I find that I really don't care about the core legal issue here: the violation of Plame's identity as a CIA operative. I'm reading her husband Joseph Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity, and it's not very convincing.

I have to preface this by saying that I think Joe Wilson is to be hugely admired. He served his country honorably for many years as a Foreign Service officer, diplomat, and ambassador, under George Bush I and Bill Clinton. He's what you'd expect of an ambassador: handsome, pretty smart, extremely presentable, good judgment.

But Wilson's greatest service was as a talking head in the 18 months leading up to the Iraq war, in taking on what he calls the "neoconservative juggernaut." He knew the territory. He'd been acting ambassador in Iraq during Desert Storm, he knew how deluded the neocons were about democracy and militarism. He said so forcefully again and again. And he performed an important mission when he went to Niger in 2002 at the behest of the CIA to explore the claim that Niger was supplying uranium to Saddam Hussein. Untrue, he reported. But the Administration swept his report aside when President Bush made the opposite assertion in his 2003 State of the Union speech, which laid out the (fraudulent and absurd) grounds for war in Iraq. After the war began, and soon enough the predictable chaos in Iraq, the pre-war intelligence became politicized, and Wilson went public about his role. In a stunning Times Op-Ed piece in July 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," he said that the Bush administration had "twisted" intelligence to justify war. Well, then Vice President Cheney needed to take him on. And someone in the White House—I don't know all the who's and what's and Libby's and Millers, it's too confusing—leaked to Bob Novak that Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was a CIA operative and that she had suggested sending him on the trip to Niger.

In his book, Wilson says that when Novak blew his wife's cover, it meant "Twenty years of loyal service down the drain." And as for the claim that his wife suggested he go to Niger, this is a smear. "The attacks of the past several months have left us dumbfounded... [they have been] a concerted effort to destroy our reputations..." The word "vitriol" is also in there. So is Karl Rove "declaring war on two U.S. citizens." The same thing the Republicans did to John Kerry with the Swift boats.

Sorry, call me daft, I don't see the smear. The Swiftboating of John Kerry was a true smear, a (sadly successful) effort to portray a guy with an honorable record in combat in Vietnam (when Bush and Cheney were dodging service) as a liar. But Wilson says that his wife was involved in the CIA process of sending him to Niger. She conveyed the initial request to him, even wrote up a couple lines about her husband for the CIA. What if she did suggest him? That doesn't undermine his facts.

Also, though I'll rejoice to see the leakers, liars and leaker-hypocrites in the White House indicted, I don't understand why I have to share Wilson's piety about his wife's undercover work. He intones that CIA people go to the grave anonymous, and anonymity is vital. As the otherwise-objectionable warmonger Christopher Hitchens has pointed out on Slate, the left used to be dubious about the CIA. I'm not about to convert now, especially when Wilson offers only mingy info about his wife's work, saying that she went from a cover in Brussels in the energy business in the 90s to some kind of big desk job at Langley when she got outed. Thereupon losing all her friends, he suggests. (I bet she'd have more friends than ever—heck, she was at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.) Or there's this sort of highfalutin vagueness:

There is a kind of personal tragedy in the leak case for Wilson: it unleashed his vanity, and transformed a guy who was doing wonderful public-citizen work for the right side at maybe the most important time in our lives, a guy who understood the international identity crisis that this war was about to plunge our once-great democracy into—transformed him into a big head. Joe Wilson takes Joe Wilson way too seriously. He believes any fawning comment he hears. He treats his appearance on the Jon Stewart show as some kind of affair of state, and chronicles every step he took in this process over 508 pages—while brushing right by a related and truly vicious tragedy, the suicide of British intelligence analyst David Kelly, after he was outed at the same time as Valerie Plame as the source of BBC's allegation of "sexed-up" intelligence. Poor Kelly was a Graham Greene character. Lacking Wilson's standing, or stout temperament, he was in the crosshairs in a different way, grilled by an angry Parliamentary committee. His story is much more wrenching. Or I think of the way Dan Ellsberg, an unquestionable hero, conducted himself after the Pentagon Papers caused him to be a victim of way, way worse than what Wilson has experienced. He has shown more class than Wilson, and more self-understanding: he knew that he had dared to take on the powers, and some of what befell him wasn't about him, it was just politics.

P.S. Since posting this, I got a couple comments that were real smart. One change I've made is to remove the nasty term fathead.

Two other comments force me to reflect that I'm talking out of my hat on Plame's outing—maybe I'm wrong. Wilson's book in unconvincing on that score; maybe Valerie Plame's book will make that case.

followed by a much tougher comment from Anonymous:

And that was it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Anonymous was Joe Wilson, Plame's husband, who I mentioned in the post, and that he was alerted to my item by a search service that alerts people who monitor their appearances on the 'net. It's just a guess. But that was the feeling I got from the formal and angry, masculine note.

Two lessons. One, the best part of the internet is highly-specialized conversations, gatherings of experts, or to use Howard Rheingold's expression, Smart mobs. Focused education. I learned more about how the CIA works.

Two, I wish I hadn't been so nasty. We thought the internet was the wild west, full of flaming and irrationality, because it's a "virtual reality" where people go in masks. Well, we had it wrong. It's actually very sophisticated socially, and people who flame get sorted out rather quickly. It's not a virtual reality, it's reality. Put another way, it's only as artificial socially as a dinner party, and maybe less artificial than a dinner party, because people are being more honest. And there's a ton more exchange of views than there is in a newspaper. If you're going to be a jerk, you'll suffer for it on the internet.

Which is to say, I promptly ordered Joe Wilson's book The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir. Looking forward to reading it, Joe.

Much as I hope this case will take down the vicious Cheney and Rove, and Judith and Scooter, and all the other war cabal-ers, the core infraction has never seemed like a big deal. I wonder how many people knew that (Plame)(Wilson) was CIA. I wonder what she was actually doing, besides commuting to a desk job from her beautiful home in Washington, and reading the Financial Times. Under cover, of course. In what sense was her work compromised? Yes, they were scurrilously trying to undermine Joe Wilson, but how did this leak smear Wilson? He's been dining off it ever since. (Though yes, he was a noble force on the Niger lies.)

I've had brushes with CIA analysts over the years and the sad truth is they're a lot like journalists. They read stuff. They send one another emails. (If you're Ken Pollack on the Iran account, you don't even go to Iran). I know they train to handle guns, but how often do they actually do so? I once visited an embassy compound in the Third World where a friend in State explained to me that the CIA guys just paid off informants to get information about the bad guys. I wonder whether (Plame)(Wilson) even got that far. According to the Vanity Fair profile that launched her blonde meteor, she graduated from Penn State—in the glamour days CIA people did a little better than that—and apparently spent her time in various European capitals, such as dangerous Brussels, working on, among other things, her wifeability. She landed an Ambassador. Good for her. But $2.5 million? There better be a lot of sex.