There's nothing wrong with leaks (spread the word)

Leaks have long been a part of the Washington political scene, and that's fine with the press. Without leaks, reporters would be out of business.
But to hear him tell it, President Bush had no tolerance for leaks, none at all.
When questions were raised in June and July 2003 regarding leaks apparently designed to embarrass or discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of President Bush's rationale for going to war in Iraq, the president repeated his distaste for leaks -- especially those of the illegal kind.
Now, it turns out, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has told a grand jury that at least some of the information leaked to discredit Wilson was authorized by President Bush himself.
Tough case
The Libby case has inspired an interesting example of gamesmanship. Libby faces charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI regarding the disclosure that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, worked for the CIA. He is accused of making false statements about how he learned of her CIA employment and what he told reporters about her.
In his attempt to stymie the prosecution, Libby has demanded thousands of documents, some sensitive, that would show he was far too busy to keep straight in his mind what he knew about the Wilson case and when he knew it.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has countered that defense claim by citing Libby's testimony that Libby released parts of a CIA assessment of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions at the urging of Cheney and with the assurance that the president wanted the then-classified information to get out. Fitzgerald's point: when attacking Wilson's credibility involves direct orders from the vice president and indirect orders from the president, even a fellow as busy as Libby is going to remember the details.
The Wilson-Plame case has been a strange one from the beginning. Early on, President Bush promised that if anyone in the White House was involved in outing a CIA agent, they'd be gone. It would have seemed an easy enough mater for the president of the United States to ask his top aides (and his vice president) if they were involved, yet he apparently didn't.
He left the job to the Justice Department, and, ultimately, Fitzgerald. When Libby's involvement became public, he was forced out. But Karl Rove, the president's right-hand man, remains under investigation in the Plame case and remains in the White House.
CIA report
The intelligence Libby was authorized to leak to Miller stated that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium -- which wasn't even a fair reading of the document. But arguably, once the president ordered the contents of the document circulated, it was no longer classified (though official declassification didn't come until 10 days later).
Still, such selective declassification, especially in a White House the abhors leaks, is bound to raise questions.
Friday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan argued that there is a difference between the White House deciding when classified information should be released and anyone else releasing classified information. The White House, he said, is acting in the public interest; when others leak, it is politically suspect and dangerous to the Republic.
That fits the long-established pattern of this administration: whatever the president does is OK because he is a war time president. Whether it's authorizing warrantless surveillance, holding people indefinitely as "enemy combatants" or selectively declassifying state secrets, we're all supposed to look the other way.