"They're world-famous and immensely rich"

By Creature

This weekend on the McLaughlin Report John Podhoretz reminds the nation how the outing of Valerie Plame was really a "win win" for the Wilson's:

She's got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar movie deal. Tom Hanks and Cate Blanchett are going to play them in the movie. It's a terrible thing that happened to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. They're world-famous and immensely rich -- awful.

That's not why you pardon him. You pardon him because he was -- because no harm was done in the case, because it was a case that was overreached. The sentence was an overreach. The indictment was an overreach. He did not do -- and we know, as a matter of tort, that, far form doing any harm to Valerie Plame Wilson, she got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar book deal.

I guess damage, as a matter of tort, to national security by outing a CIA officer who just happened to be on the hunt for WMDs doesn't play into the equation for Mr. Podhoretz. It's about deflection of guilt. It's about minimization of harm. It's about the politics of personal destruction. It's never about the good of, or harm to, the country for these neocon shills. Selfish bastards.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)