Moral relativism etc. : The CIA, Valerie Plame's employer, is linked to torture. Was there ever a time when it was not? Is there anything new about this scandal other than the pictures? Marshall's comment, the more I think of it, is grotesque. Does moral responsibility begin and end with the King or his factotum, with the US or its vassals, with the one who does the deed or the one who pays the bill?
How much respect is a civilized human being obliged to have for Wilson, Plame, or Clarke? Clarke is a good servant to a corrupt master. Wilson, and Plame, his glamour girl wife; he with a portrait of George H.W. Bush on his desk and her glamour in the service of... what?

Again, it's not the facts that annoy me, though even that word is a little off -the facts are uncertain- it's the need to oversimplify, to find saints and saviors. Atrios is as annoying to me in some ways as Leiter. Everyone in that little list above is self serving and corrupt. I'm grateful for their honesty as regards recent events, but that doesn't mean I'd enjoy sitting next to any of them at dinner.