Credit Where It's Due

I’m no particular fan of The New Republic’s Marty Peretz (anybody that enamored of the “genius” of Al Gore is in need of serious medical attention), but I can only doff my hat (if I had one) to this resplendent display of outraged snark, encompassing Joe Wilson:

I myself had wondered why the CIA had been so dumb–such dumbness is something to which we should have long ago become accustomed!–as to send a low-level diplomat to check on yellowcake sales from Niger to Iraq when it should have dispatched a real spook. Well, it turns out that a “real spook” had recommended him to her boss, that spook being Valerie Plame, who happens also to be Wilson’s wife. He has long denied that she had anything to do with his going to Niger and that, alas, was a lie. It appears, in fact, that this is the sole reason he was sent. Still, in a lot of dining rooms where I am a guest here, there is outrage that someone in the vice president’s office “outed” Ms. Plame, as though everybody in Georgetown hadn’t already known she was under cover, so to speak. Under cover, but not really. One guest even asserted that someone in the vice president’s office is surely guilty of treason, no less–an offense this person certainly wouldn’t have attributed to the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss, Daniel Ellsberg or Philip Agee.

… Sandy Berger:

One of his lawyers attributes this behavior to “sloppiness,” which may better explain his career as Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser and certainly describes his presentation of self in everyday life. But it is not an explanation of his conduct in the archives or, for that matter, at home. Personnel at the archives actually noticed him stuffing his pockets with papers as he left, which is how the FBI found out about this bizarre tale in the first place. Inadvertence, then, doesn’t do it either. Maybe Sandy wanted souvenirs from his career in the White House that was punctuated by so many catastrophes for the United States.

… Jacques Chriac:

French President Jacques Chirac has let it be known that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not welcome as a guest in Paris. Mazel tov! Can you actually imagine Chirac putting out a genuine welcome mat for the Israeli leader who has shown that all of France’s interventions in the area have brought nothing good: more of terror, more of Arafat, worst of all, more of Palestinian suffering, all to succor the illusion of French influence in the region.

… and, oh hell, just go read the rest of it.