The Bush Meltdown Continues

You can now add traitor -- or perhaps traitorous liar -- to the long list of negative but accurate characterizations of President George Walker Bush.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, indicted former chief of staff to Vice President Cheyney, has told a federal grand jury that he gave a New York Times reporter classified information with the specific permission of Bush and for the specific purpose of discrediting former State Department official Joseph Wilson, according to a new court filing from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

This bombshell disclosure places the president directly in the chain of events leading to the outting of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, for the first time.

Lest we forget, the effort to discredit Wilson and out Plame was a typically vicious pushback by the White House against a critic of its Iraq war policy. (And although Fitzgerald's filing does not mention her by name, the Times reporter was undoubtedly the now disgraced Judith Miller.)

Bush, of course, feigned surprise and shock (or is it shock and surprise?) at the whole sordid affair from the outset and promised to fire anyone on his staff who had leaked anything. He later broke that promise when White House consigliere Karl Rove became implicated in the growing scandal.

Meanwhile, Bush's lawyers said in response to Fitzgerald's filing (and I will try to write this with a straight face) that once the president leaks classified information it is declassified. While that is literally true, there are two problems with it:

* Only Vice President Cheney and Libby were supposed to know about the declassification, not a reporter or anyone else, according to the filing.

* Using the declassification dodge as a defense beggars belief since it is now beyond obvious that Bush has repeatedly lied (there's that word again) about what he knew regarding the Wilson-Plame leak scandal.

The anything but liberal New York Sun, which broke the story 24 hours before it began trickling into the MSM, has more here, while the Washington Post has been quickly catching up here.

Call me slow (or call me anything else), but it has finally dawned on me that the greatest threat to national security is the president himself.