We have no direct evidence that President Bush decided to declassify top-secret information for the sake of punishing that windbag Joe Wilson. But it looks really, really bad to me. We know he wanted to get the NIE information out to the press to counter the claims Wilson was making about Niger and yellowcake. If he was on the up and up, why did he go about it sneakily? If he had the right to declassify it, why didn’t he simply do it and come out with a press release? Why did he pass the word to Scooter Libby through VP Cheney, and have Libby sneak around speaking on double-secret background to top reporters? ~Rod Dreher, Dallas Morning Views