Is It My Imagination....

...or don't we already know for a fact, that it was Richard Armitage that "outed" Valerie Plame, in an episode that a special independent prosecutor felt violated no laws?

So, on what planet could this be a reasonable thing to champion?

Valerie Plame Puts Critics to Shame

Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent who was ‘outed’ after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly disagreed with the Bush administration, is testifying before Congress today and reportedly speaking very well.

AP via CNN:

Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress Friday that senior officials at the White House and State Department “carelessly and recklessly” blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.
Plame Wilson, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.

“It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Washington Post: Valerie Plame, the Spy Who’s Ready to Speak for Herself

She has been silent nearly four years. Today, the CIA officer whose unmasking fueled a political uproar and criminal probe that reached into the White House is poised to finally tell her own story — before Congress.

Valerie Plame’s testimony will have all the trappings of a “Garbo speaks” moment on Capitol Hill, with cameras and microphones arrayed to capture the voice of Plame, the glamorous but mute star of a compelling political intrigue. But while she hopes to clear up her status as an agency operative when her name first hit newspapers in July 2003, America’s most publicized spy is unlikely to betray any details in open session about her mysterious career.

The reason: Plame remains gagged by the same secrecy rules that governed her 20 years as a CIA employee working overseas and at Langley in classified positions.

People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. “She is so tired of hearing that,” her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.

UPDATE by MvdG
Think Progress has a good post up about Valerie Plame’s testimony “under oath before the House Government and Oversight Committee”. Plame said that she was still a covert agent at the moment her name was leaked to the press, she added: “While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.”

Think Progress has a video up, be sure to watch it. She doesn’t just explain that she was a covert agent, she also explains what the leak meant to her personally:

“all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all the value of my years of service, were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly”.

As both TP’s Faiz and The Carpetbagger Report point out, quite some people have denied that Plame was, at the time that Novak wrote his column, a covert agent. Plame (and CIA sources for that matter) contradicts that.

TCR has her entire open statement up - you all should read it in its entirety. She also pointed out:

“The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can’t provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake.”

Long story short: everyone involved should be fired immediately. Karl Rove should be forced to leave the White House per today. This is an emberassment and I find it, to be quite honest, insulting to the American people and to those who choose to serve their country, for anyone to defend the conduct of certain people in the White House in this matter

All I can say is what kind of dishonest person do you have to be to put up this kind of crap without even mentioning the name of the person we know to be the leaker?

Somewhere Stalin is smiling..."Now THIS is how to have a show trial."