ROVE AS HERO

The Wall Street Journal has begun the campaign – to thank Karl Rove for exposing a CIA operative because her husband’s report on uranium in Niger was flawed:

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize–perhaps the next iteration of the “Truth-Telling” award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

Just a thought experiment: can you imagine the WSJ calling to give, say, Sid Blumenthal a medal for outing a CIA operative to counter misinformation in the Bosnia campaign? Fox’s John Gibson echoes:

I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him. Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And if nobody else had the cojones to do it, I’m glad Rove did – if he did do it, and he still says he didn’t.

For the partisan right, outing CIA operatives in wartime is the patriotic thing to do. There’s only one real option worthy of Bush: give Rove the Medal of Freedom.