According to the Financial Times, the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative was as more a shot across the bow of the intelligence community rather than an individualized retaliation at Joseph Wilson:

Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: “She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme.”
The leak was a way to “demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular”.
He said that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb.
While the intelligence agencies believe their mission is to provide accurate analysis to the president to aid policy decisions, in the case of Iraq “we had policies that were already adopted and they were looking for those selective pieces of intelligence that would support the policy”, Mr Cannistraro said.

Strong words from a man who served on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration.
Since the beginning, I’ve suspected this Plame episode was part of a larger intelligence battle. Had the White House merely wanted to retaliate Wilson for his role in the Yellowcake controversy, they could have done so directly. But they wanted to intimidate potential whistle blowers: stay in line with the government policy–or else. So that’s why they struck Plame–they wanted to highlight the vulnerability of intelligence agents.
This story hasn’t got much buzz recently, while the Department of Justice ramps up its leak investigation. But I suspect we’re going to hear more intelligence people talking to the media if we don’t get answers from the DOJ soon.

I’m wandering into dangerous technical territory. But from what I gather here and here, the White House website recently changed its robots.txt file to disallow external search engine robots, such as Google’s, from indexing files in its Iraq-related directories.
Users can still pull up these web pages using the internal White House site search, but this change makes it harder for web surfers to pull up past White House pronouncements on Iraq using the most popular search engines.
Why might the administration be doing this? Jesse Berney:

It’s easy enough to understand the reasoning if you look at past White House actions. Earlier this year, the White House revised pages on its website claiming that “combat” was over in Iraq, changing them to say “major combat.”
One of the reasons some alert readers noticed the change � and were able to prove it � was that Google had archived the pages before the change occurred. Now that all of the White House pages about Iraq are no longer archived by Google, such historical revisionism will be harder to catch.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation. After all, this White House hardly has a track record in openness, disclosure, and accountability.
Via Calpundit.

It’s not a good time for many people:

“California Fires Kill 13, Destroy Homes“

To add insult to injury, authorities suspect arsonists are responsible for this mess.
Long-time Resonance associate B, currently stationed in San Bernardino County, writes:

Waterman Canyon Fire is the one in the story that’s obliterated our visibility today. S and I are packing bags getting ready to evacuate if necessary. Hopefully not an issue since it’s over 10miles away, but very unnerving nonetheless to walk outside and have soot flying in our eyes. Trying to pack the important papers and a few important belongings away.
Pray for our communities,
B

Let’s hope the winds change and firefighters can get things under control soon.
UPDATE: Here’s a satellite image of the wildfire area.

The “long, hard slog” continues:

“Strong Explosion Rocks Central Baghdad“

According to reports, there was a series of least three explosions at or around 8:30 a.m. local time. I’m not sure how many there have been in the past 24 hours.
From the archives:

“Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”

Vice-President Dick Cheney
“Meet the Press”
March 16, 2003

Errr, some of the time:

President Bush is a man of steely discipline, but it appears the commander in chief has not gained complete mastery over his sweet tooth.
In a new book by author Stephen Mansfield, “The Faith of George W. Bush,” the following passage appears on page 173: “Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president.”
Seldom reported — and apparently little observed. When the White House sent out the shared “pool report” of Bush’s roundtable interview with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Australia, it became apparent that the president had fallen off the candy wagon.
“And he was relaxed. Very relaxed,” was the description. “As a reporter began to ask about the Middle East . . . Mr. Bush popped a butterscotch Lifesaver in his mouth. He smacked the candy as he said: ‘Middle East, that’s right.’ “

I wonder what kind of tasties they may have had aborad the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
Via Eschaton.