Watch Your Facts, AP...

Not that the following section isn't technically accurate, but it creates the most pervasive, misleading picture ever perpetrated on the American people without the help of the public education system (and which I've summarized previously):

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Yes, Plame claimed her identity was "leaked" - well, aside from her showing up in public and hyping her desk job to people at parties.

Yes, Libby was convicted of the charges mentioned in the article.

But putting those two facts together in that sequence constitutes an EGREGIOUS non-sequitur.

Libby didn't leak anything. He may or may not have intentionally mis-remembered something in order to avoid association with a crime that was never committed.

Remember who the leak was? RICHARD ARMITAGE. (He would be a Clinton administration official.)

And Bob Novak - who KNEW his source - didn't even have the courtesy to pipe up and until after the mock-investigation was concluded, and the image seared into the public mind of vengeful Bush cronies outing a CIA agent.

Sometimes I still wonder why people just don't seem to understand facts anymore... and then I read a rehashed story like this and remember that it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the lies and anti-US propaganda we're spoon-fed for the duration of our education - only to be followed-up thereafter by the above-mentioned variety of agenda-ridden news production and thoughtless news consumption.

Oh - and some good news tangentially related to this post: we got a cache of yellowcake out of Iraq recently! Yay!!!