Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter:

Like a lot of President Bush’s critics, I supported the Iraq war at first. Because of the evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction laid out by Colin Powell, I agreed that we needed to disarm Saddam Hussein. I even think it’s possible that 25 years from now, historians will conclude that the Iraq war helped accelerate the modernizing of the Middle East, even if it doesn’t fully democratize it.

But if that happens, Bush might not get as much credit as he hopes, and not just because most historians, as Richard Nixon liked to say, are liberals. Bush may look bad because his leadership on Iraq has been a fiasco. He didn’t plan for it: the early decisions that allowed the insurgency to get going were breathtakingly incompetent. He didn’t pay for it: Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war, this one now costing nearly $1 billion a week. And most important of all, he didn’t tell the American people the truth about it: taking a nation to war is the most solemn duty of a president, and he’d better make certain there’s no alternative and no doubt about the evidence.

Why do I mention this now? Because for all of the complexities of the Valerie Plame case, for all the questions raised about the future of investigative journalism and the fate of the most influential aide to an American president since Louis Howe served Franklin D. Roosevelt 70 years ago, this story is fundamentally about how easy it was to get into Iraq and how hard it will be to get out.

We got in because we “cooked” the intelligence, then hyped it. That’s why the “Downing Street Memo” is not a smoking gun but a big “duh.” For two years we’ve known that senior White House officials were determined to, in the words of the British intelligence memo, “fix” the intelligence to suit their policy decisions. When someone crossed them, they would “fix” him, too, as career ambassador Joseph Wilson found when he came back from Africa with a report that threw cold water on the story that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.

…

The bigger question is what this scandal does to the CIA’s ability to develop essential “humint” (human intelligence). Here’s where the Iraq war comes in again. The sooner we beef up our intelligence, the sooner we crack the insurgency and get to bring our troops home. What does it say to the people doing the painstaking work of building those spy networks when the identity of one of their own becomes just another weapon in the partisan wars of Washington? For a smart guy, Karl Rove was awfully stupid.

Carl Bernstein on the Daily Show:

Now, everything has become part of an ideological war, and more energy and thought is going into that ideological war — against the Democrats particularly, but some of it comes back the other way — than into fighting terrorists.

I mean, really, they’re so far off the ball in what the real game is at this point. It is about destroying the other side, and serving the country has become incidental.

Annie Lamott:

It’s a fairly common saying among sober alcoholics that the reason they finally quit drinking was that, by the end, they were getting sicker faster than they could lower their standards.

Annie’s piece recalls a scene that runs through Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, slowly revealed. One character tries to help a wounded comrade and realizes, in an utterly harrowing moment, that things are much worse than they seem. (If you’ve read the book, you will remember the scene.)

[T]here were so many revelations and so much brilliant writing this weekend, that you could’t help but think that this nation is just beginning to notice the [first evidence that things are much worse than they seem.]

Ed Kilgore on the Irresponsibility Era:

Recall George W. Bush’s meta-message during the 2000 campaign: it was time for a “responsibility era” to rein in the excesses introduced by the out-of-control Baby Boomer Bill Clinton. The grown-ups, emblemized by Dick Cheney and other Bush 41 exiles, were ready to give America a mature and accountable government.

That has turned out to be the biggest Bush lie of them all.

With precious few exceptions, this administration has been characterized by a recklessness and irresponsibility that could barely have been matched if the country had been turned over to actual adolescents.

The Swing State Project has a DNC press release about the record of the Republican smear machine. The following is only a summary. Lots more details are at the Swing State Project site. (I couldn’t find this press release on the DNC site.)

THE REPUBLICAN SMEAR MACHINE CONSTANTLY IN MOTION

Republicans follow a tried and true tactic of attacking, smearing, and sliming anyone who might get in their way or threaten their political survival. Their ongoing effort to discredit Joe Wilson and their destruction of his wife’s career is just the latest in a long line of questionable tactics that the Bush Administration, Karl Rove, and Ken Mehlman consistently use to protect themselves and ensure their continued political power.

ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF PUNISHED FOR TROOP LEVEL ASSESSMENT

Shinseki Punished For Honest Assessment Of Troop Levels Needed In Iraq; Retribution Intimidated Commanders…

FORMER COUNTER-TERRORISM CHIEF SMEARED FOR CRITICISMS

Richard Clarke Smeared After Talking About White House Lackadaisical Attitude Towards Al-Qaeda…

TREASURY SECRETARY FIRED FOR OPPOSITION TO TAX CUTS

O’Neill Fired For Expressing Misgivings Over Bush’s Additional Tax Cuts…

ECONOMIC ADVISER FORCED TO RESIGN

Lindsey Forced to Resign After Citing Large Cost of Iraq War. White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey annoyed the White House in September 2002 when he suggested that war with Iraq would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, an estimate Administration officials insisted was too high…

ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS DIRECTOR FIRED FOR BUDGET CRITICISM…

PARK POLICE CHIEF FIRED FOR CRITICM OF BUSH POLICY…

REPORTER SMEARED FOR REPORTING ON TROOP MORALE

ABC News Reporter Smeared By Bush Administration For Documenting Low Troop Morale…

INS AGENTS DEMOTED FOR POINTING OUT LAX SECURITY…

Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Agents Mark Hall and Robert Linderman were demoted from their positions after they told reporters that United States security at Canadian borders was lax…

Smears, demotions, firings. This administration rewards failure and punishes competence and truth-telling.

In furtherance of a White House smear, Karl Rove leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent, and Bush is “moving the goalposts” so Rove can stay. Josh Marshall wants more specificity:

My first question is whether the rule applies merely to indictment or whether conviction is necessary to trigger dismissal. And as I mentioned on TPM, can a staffer continue to work while their case is taken up on appeal?

Oh, they’ll keep moving the goalposts, as needed. That’s a fundamental part of this administration’s M.O.