The bigger picture

Everyone who's whipped themselves into a frenzy over Karl Rove, please note this:

...it's important to look beyond the immediate political spectacle in Washington -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally confronted by reporters who feel abused and lied to -- to the reason Rove was talking to a reporter about ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson at all.

The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence -- in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to "fix" the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.

By throwing so much energy behind trying to topple Rove, whatever little, hard-fought momentum the DSM story had has now vanished.

From here on out, critics of the Bush administration would be best advised to make sure they don't lose sight of the bigger picture, or, at least, link Rove's shenanigans to the larger issue of the fraudulent march to war.