So for the past few months you've been hearing about this CIA leak case. You click on the articles once or twice and the monoliths on the wall do not get any clearer. You turn on TV news, and one talking head accuses the Bush administration of treason, while the other refuses to answer beside muttering something about “criminalizing politics.” Never fear, UW. I am more than prepared to lead my sheep through the wolves of democratic fear-mongering.

It was a dark and stormy night when Ambassador Joe Wilson returned from a trip to Niger and wrote ridiculous things in The New York Times about not being able to find evidence of administration claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. The same uranium we all know was sent right across the border to Iran when we freed the Iraqi people from Saddam and the perils of indoor plumbing.

It was in our nation's best interest to refute these ridiculous claims by setting the record straight in the media. No, not by providing further evidence of Iraqi intentions to acquire nuclear arms, but by pointing out Mr. Wilson is a pansy who probably got the job from his secret agent wife Valarie Plame. The fact that she was a “secret” agent was irrelevant as administration officials figured whatever secret agency stuff she was doing probably wasn't as important as reassuring public confidence in our reasons for war and giving Joe Wilson an epic burn.

So outing her as a secret agent turned out to be illegal, and the whole story gained prominence during the '04 campaign. Democrats accused Republicans of putting politics ahead of national security and using personal attacks to destroy the careers of administration detractors. They claim the scandal is definitive evidence of a White House so intent on invading Iraq that it ignored or punished anyone who offered evidence to the contrary.

To keep this potential scandal off the front page, President Bush appointed a notoriously tough prosecutor from Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, to investigate which punk dared to leak this to the press. Mr. Bush told reporters in September 2003: "There are too many leaks of classified information, and if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."

So it turns out the president was actually the one who authorized the leak of this information. Before you let the liberal media tell you the president misled the American people, look at the facts. Once a president decides to reveal information, it immediately becomes declassified. Therefore, Mr. Bush was right when he said there are too many leaks of CLASSIFIED information, and if someone leaked said information, he wants to know who. Turns out it was nobody, since there was no leak of classified information to begin with.

Same thing when Mr. Bush said, "I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks." He obviously meant to say classified leaks. Morons.

But wait a minute — aren't these the same misleading subtleties that President Bush railed against in the 2000 campaign, when he promised to restore integrity to the Oval Office? If there was nothing wrong with releasing this information, why didn't Mr. Bush just say he cleared it so the vice president's chief of staff Lewis 'Scooter' Libby wouldn't be facing years in prison for obstructing justice? Why did Libby ask to be identified as a “former hill staffer” when revealing this to the Times, a position he hadn't held in years? Was the White House's refusal to refute these claims, then the late-week scramble to point out the president never said who should leak the information or which reporter to leak it to, just about the worst political spin since we started keeping the stat three decades ago?

No, this can't be! It must have been the Democrats. It has to be more of their partisan trickery. The Democrats just want us to be afraid of our administration. Of course! There is a difference between the leaking of information that could be harmful to our security and releasing information when the public needs to know all the facts. In this case, the public needed to know Joe Wilson only got the Iran job because of his wife, so there is no way he could have done a more accurate job gathering intelligence than the guys the White House sent.

Here is a recap: Democrats are engaging in crass politics by suggesting Iraq war intelligence was manipulated. Further, ending the careers of Valarie Plame and Joe Wilson was not petty partisan retribution. It was in the public interest.

Bassey Etim ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.