The "wisdom" of Solomon

The following news item by Associated Press writer John Solomon seems to me a perfect example of the kind of bad writing and reporting we've seen too much of in recent years. I'm not talking conservative or liberal bias, I'm just talking bad.

Let's start with the headline, which, to be scrupulously fair, I won't blame Solomon for because I don't know if he wrote it. It is:

Rove Says He Wasn't Involved in CIA Leak

And yeah, I know what you're thinking. He said that? Oh, really? Well, what possible reason would he have had to lie? But then we get into the meat of the story itself...

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told President Bush and others that he never engaged in an effort to disclose a CIA operative's identity to discredit her husband's criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, according to people with knowledge of Rove's account in the investigation.

They said Rove's denial to Bush occurred during a brief conversation in the fall of 2003, a few months after media reports revealed that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked as a covert CIA operative.

So in other words, a more accurate version of that headline would have been, Rove Told Bush He Wasn't Involved In CIA Leak In 2003. Before he testified before a grand jury four times about something he wasn't involved with, was a likely candidate for indictment for something he wasn't involved with and had an axe hanging over his head for something he wasn't involved with.

Moving on, we find this little two-line paragraph buried a little deeper in the story:

Wilson, Plame's husband, went public on July 6, 2003, with criticism of Bush administration officials, suggesting they manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Now, I suppose it would be Bush bashing of me to expect this to be followed with something like:

This later proved to be true.

But wouldn't it be considered good writing and reporting to add something like:

"Later evidence, including what is called The Downing Street Memo, tended to support this suggestion."

You know, the more I look at the things Rove, Bush at all have been doing over the past week, the more convinced I am: Everything they are doing is about giving Bush the smoothest early exit they can. That's what Miers is about-trying to make sure he has a lifeboat. That's what Rove's extra testimony is about, I betcha. Giving Bush what's called "plausible deniability".

They don't think he's going to finish out his term.

Maybe those stories about Bush falling off the wagon in the wake of Katrina are accurate. Maybe somebody (Laura?) put their foot down and said find this man a way out that evades prison.

Of course, even if he should resign in disgrace as did Nixon, I'm sure we can rely upon Cheney (or Hastert, come to that) to do for him what Ford did for Nixon.