All the leading Democrats got together recently to demand the resignation of Karl Rove, Bush's key political advisor. The charge is that Rove broke an important law by intentionally revealing the name of a CIA covert operative. Despite the pomp, ceremony, solemnity and high hopes that Democrats bring to this overtly political effort the charge is really just plain stupid and typically Democratic.

Firstly, the law clearly states that the operative must have been covert within the last 5 years. Mrs. Wilson has had a desk job at the CIA for the last 6 years. Period, end of story. Jonathan Alter, however, of Nut Case Radio (Air America) and Newsweek says it doesn't matter because operatives typically go in and out of cover and Mrs. Wilson may have wanted to go undercover someday. While this does not matter one tiny bit from a legal, technical point of view, it is especially silly when applied to Mrs. Wilson since she recently gave birth to twins and is an unlikely candidate to be playing agent Jane Bond 007 any time soon.

Secondly, based on the actual evidence to date it seems likely that Rove, at worst, merely identified her as Mr. Wilson's wife at the CIA, in the course of explaining how Mr. Wilson had gotten a nepotistic assignment through her, not the Vice President of the United States, to investigate whether Iraq had purchased Uranium from Niger. This is not enough to be considered "intentionally" outing or exposing an undercover agent with the specific intent to harm national security, according to common sense and Victoria Tensing who helped write the law.

Moreover, the most recent evidence is that Rove got his information from the press; not through official government sources, in which case any possible guilt is greatly diminished since Rove, then, was not the source of the information. And, there is no evidence that Rove even knew her actual name anyway. This again makes it very hard to charge him with intentional exposure. When pressed, most insiders are saying there is virtually no chance of Rove being charged, let alone convicted despite what Democrats and their allies in the press would have us believe.

Expect Democrats and their allies in the press to get no further here than they did with the so called Tom Delay junket scandal which fell apart the exact instant Republicans directed the press to look at Democratic junkets too.

The Democrats seem motivated to defend Mr. Wilson (the ex-Ambassador to Gabon, of all places) in large part because his report indicated that Bush was lying about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger. Would anyone believe the Democrats are motivated out of passion for defending the CIA when they (Church and Tomaselli in particular) have for decades hated and stripped the CIA bare to the point where it had no idea to whom Niger was selling its nuclear fuel or who was about to attack the World Trade Center?

So why did Rove want to discredit Wilson's report which said that Iraq did not buy or want to buy uranium from Iraq? Perhaps because the evidence showed it was a silly report. Firstly, it was not a report. Wilson was informally and orally debriefed upon his return from Niger. The
non-partisan Senate Select Committee which then formally investigated the matter concluding that the oral report was silly and led more people, rather than less, at the CIA to think there was uranium sold to Iraq.

Before the Senate investigation Wilson was a Kerry presidential adviser with his own website operated by and linked directly to the main Kerry campaign site. Immediately after the Senate investigation had discredited Wilson personally, for lying that his wife had not gotten him the Niger assignment, and professionally, for lying and incompetence regarding his conclusions, the Kerry campaign took down the website.

Secondly, Italian Intelligence first concluded and still does that there was an Iraq/Niger connection. Thirdly, British Intelligence also concluded and still does that there was a connection. Fourthly, the Butler Commission, in England, did a separate investigation and concluded that there was a connection. Fifthly, The Financial Times of London and French Intelligence both have concluded independently that there was a connection. Lastly, it is intuitively obvious that there was probably a connection since Niger is a desperately poor country with tons of very valuable uranium to export, and Iraq was certainly among the most likely destinations for such exports.

In short, Karl Rove broke no law in the course of discrediting a fraudulent oral report based on a nepotistic field trip to Niger by Mr. Wilson, the ex-Ambassador to Gabon.

On the plus side for the Democrats is 1) the CIA was angry about the incident, 2) a federal prosecutor was persuaded to pursue the case doggedly, 3) The White House did inexplicably lie saying that Rove had no involvement at all, and 4) judges who have seen secret files pertaining to the case have ruled on various related motions based on having been persuaded that the case has legitimacy.

The case has an odd quality too in that, amazingly, no one actually knows for sure exactly what charges are being investigated. It might turn out that the difficult "exposure" issue will be secondary to a charge related to revealing classified information, and of course there is always the threat that innocent people will panic when threatened by an investigation and be liable for obstruction of justice charges. In the end one has to predict it will probably turn out to be a huge waste of national energy that should have been devoted to radiating the Democratic cancer that has so infected our country.

Ted Baiamonte is author of "Understanding the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans". His blog is The Dumb Democrat, and he can be reached at bje1000@aol.com.