Plame Case Thrown Out

As you've surely heard by now, Valerie Plame's civil suit against several Bush administration people has been thrown out. I think it takes someone with a very unlegal mind such as myself to register the righteous indignation appropriate.

The simple facts of the case slay me. It's proven that CIA covert operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked to various columnists, clearly in an attempt to shut up her husband Joe Wilson, who had published an article revealing that part of the rationale for going to war with Iraq was baseless. Ms. Plame's work, while secret, revolved around nuclear proliferation issues--she pursued information on who was seeking and/or looking to sell nuclear weapons illicitly.

Review: members of the administration revealed the name of a secret agent working to keep us all safe...for brazenly political reasons.

Does it get any more cynical than that? Does it get any more un-patriotic than that? Does it get more unfair than that?

I can't imagine working in the CIA now, knowing that

1. If the administration doesn't like what your work reveals, they can do whatever they like to discredit you.

2. That your legal remedy to reclaim a 20-year career is unlikely.

3. That our media will cover it purely as a legal case, without any real attempt at making Bush or administration officials explain their actions.

I understand that the administration's best legal teams have constructed as watertight a case as possible, insulating those who were at the top of this effort from feeling the consequences of what they'd done...but I keep getting back to the difference between the legal steam roller which consumed $60,000,000 in its efforts to down a President (resulting only in perjury over a private sexual matter)...and this half-hearted year-or-so failed effort over outing a secret agent by people from the Vice President's office.

This decidedly un-legal mind gets the sense that not only was justice not done, but that justice, and Americans as a whole, were mocked.