Let's not exaggerate

I'm a bit concerned that some of us on the progressive side of the political fence are setting ourselves up for a big fall. Many are equating the disclosures in the Fitzgerald legal filings about Bush authorizing leaks with the Plame leak itself. Indeed, as I was driving around this morning listening to Jerry Springer on Air America (he's very good, by the way, nothing like the crazy TV show), he was saying that Bush had authorized the leak of Plame's identity. While he may indeed have done so, that's not the leak that's been disclosed and now admitted to by Bush himself. The leak disclosed by Fitzgerald is the leak to Judy Miller of highly selected (and therefore misleading) portions of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that discussed the aluminium tubes.


I think it's important that our side not get caught exaggerating the claims. They're certainly bad enough to begin with without exaggeration.