Is Jacob Weisberg trying to be funny?

Jacob Weisberg warns liberals not to take too much joy in the tribulations and trials (oh, please, please, please) of the Bush junta.

The Plame leak investigation, he writes in Slate, is good for neither the press nor for the American people.

Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they'll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press's right to find out, the government's ability to disclose, and the public's right to know.

This is arguable. Let's argue it.

By all indications, the Bush admministration used Judith Miller to sell lies to the American people in support of an unnecessary and illegal war. We know this now as the result of facts brought to light during Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. The New York Times has been forced to acknowledge that its coverage of the runup to the Iraq war was skewed in favor of those who planned and executed that war. This is what Miller's silence was protecting. She was not protecting an innocent source. She was protecting the vice president's chief of staff who extracted from her a promise to mis-identify him to her readers as a "former hill staffer." There was no liberal principle of press freedom at work in this case. There were lies which are now exposed.

Weisberg continues with an indictment of the law designed to protect the identities of undercover intelligence agents like Valerie Plame Wilson:

At the heart of this misbegotten investigation is a flawed piece of legislation called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. As Jack Shafer has written, this 1982 law is almost impossible to break because it requires that a government official unmask covert agents knowingly and with the intent of causing harm. The law was written narrowly to avoid infringing free speech or becoming an equivalent of Britain's Official Secrets Act. Under the First Amendment, we have a right to debate what is done in our name, even by secret agents. It may be impossible to criminalize malicious disclosure without hampering essential public debate.

Yet, somehow, the character assassins in the Bush administration may have very well managed to break this law which Weisberg asserts is nearly impossible to break. This is what the investigation is designed to ascertain. So determined were these officials to advance their agenda, and hide the falsehoods used to advance it, that they were willing to compromise the security of the United States by exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent. As a citizen, I like knowing this. It permits me to make an informed choice about the people involved the next time I step into a voting booth.

No one disputes that Bush officials negligently and stupidly revealed Valerie Plame's undercover status. But after two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame—namely Rove or Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff—knew she was undercover.

The idea that the outing of Valerie Plame was merely stupid and negligent is highly disputed. The possibility that her identity was revealed intentionally and maliciously is what spurred the investigation. What drove it forward was the fact that persons-of-interest gave apparently false and/or incomplete information to federal investigators in the course of the investigation. Perhaps Weisberg is willing to accept that this pattern of evasions, misdirections and outright lies was merely coincidence. Many of us are not willing to accept this. We think that if senior Bush administration officials were dishonest with a federal prosecutor, there must be a reason. We would like to know why. It is perfectly reasonable to think that the lies were intended to cover up a crime.

And as nasty as they might be, it's not really thinkable that they would have known. You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn't like in the New York Times.

What? As nasty as they might be? We know how nasty they are. We know that they slander their opponents and their opponents' wives in order to win elections and gain political advantage. Ask John and Cindy McCain. Ask John and Teresa Kerry. And, yes, ask Joseph and Valerie Wilson, nee Plame.

How can Weisberg believe it is "unthinkable" that the people in question would have had access to Valerie Plame's undercover status? These are men and women who operate at the highest level of the Executive branch of government.

Now, the person-of-interest in this case are entitled certainly to a presumption of innocence until such time as guilt is determined. That is, after all, the reason for the investigation and, perhaps, the prosecution of the suspects. It is ridiculous, however, to suggest that Karl Rove is incapable of committing acts that for most decent people would be unthinkable.

Finally, President Bush and his aides have earned the low regard in which most Americans hold them. There is enough evidence to make at the very least a strong circumstantial case that Bush's war had nothing to do with WMDs or a threat to the United States posed by Iraq.

Add this disaster to the rampant corruption and shameful incompetence that characterize this administration and it really is not a stretch to imagine that they are capable of anything.

Any method by which the truth comes out, Mr. Weisberg, is good for America and for Americans.