Divine right of Bushes

So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around his back to peddle secret information.

Scooter is a "good Judas", as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old manuscript that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him.

Since Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.

When other officials leak top-secret stuff – even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts – they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.

After the New York Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorised snooping in America, George W was outraged. "Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country," he said.

Really, George W should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody.

Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers indicating that Scooter testified that in 2003, when the White House was getting rattled by the failure to find WMD and by criticism from a former diplomat on the margins of the war scheme, the president authorised Dick Cheney to authorise Scooter to make a one-sided dump of classified information about Saddam's arsenal to the New York Times's Judy Miller.

Scooter was so concerned about the propriety of the deal that he checked with the vice-president's lawyer, David Addington, before he spilled. Addington, whose politics are to the right of Louis XVI, said, go right ahead. Now Addington has Scooter's job. Coincidence?

George W subscribes to the Nixonian theory that when a president does it, it's not illegal – or maybe it's the divine right of kings.

If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't it have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?

Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter.

"The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," Scott McClellan said. "And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction." And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction.

If George W wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If George W doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi.

That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it.

The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess.