The real victims of the Valerie Plame non-issue, it turns out, were those who believed in the honorablity of two men: Richard Armitage and Colin Powell.

The new book by far-left journalist David Corn reveals that Armitage and the much-admired Colin Powell have known for years that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Richard Cheney, and all the other fancied candidates for the naming of Valerie Plame were innocent.

They also knew that the leaker himself - who turns out to have been Armitage - was guiltless of any crime or misdeed. They knew that there was no orchestrated plot by the White House to discredit a brave secret agent.

There was no plot - there was no secret agent - and the discredit belongs to the agent’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who lied about what he found out in Niger about Iraq’s attempt to buy yellowcake, who lied about what he said, who lied about his wife’s involvement, and who firmly believed after the liberation of Iraq that Saddam had hidden weapons of mass destruction.

Joe Wilson has no honor to save. But Colin Powell and Richard Armitage did have the reputation of being good, decent, if wet, public servants. Their decency turns out to be something to be used when convenient to them - and to be discarded when it becomes useful to the enemies of their enemies.

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