Plame/Wilson

The Junkyard Blog has another strong post:

Wilson got sent by someone in the CIA on a mission apparently designed to discredit one rationale for war, namely that the Iraqis had tried to obtain uranium to build a nuclear weapon. He was not sent on a serious mission of inquiry, just a junket to provide the CIA with some cover once the question rose to the forefront. Wilson was singularly unqualified for this mission, as he demonstrated in the way he conducted it, the way he reported it to the CIA, and the way he wrote about it after the fact. His sole qualification was that he had connections in the region, which isn't much of a qualification, and secondarily that his wife was a WMD expert for the CIA.

I'm not certain that Wilson is the person who leaked Plame's job to Novak but JYB makes an interesting case for it. I still think the "outing" was inadvertent. The goal was not to "punish" Wilson but to explain why Wilson was chosen for a sensitive mission given his anti-war position.