You know when the Washington Post bails on you, you’re fifteen minutes is up.

Wilson’s debunked boondoggle actually got fourteen minutes more than it deserved.

This is brutal:

” it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.”

Yeah, “unfortunate”, but even more so that the greater story of what happened is now being swept under the rug (which is the purpose of this editorial). There is in fact a concerted effort by the MSM to now “discredit” and distance themselves from the story for they know the consequences for some if EVERYTHING got out.

We forget that Wilson didn’t pull this caper on his own, he had accomplices. Valerie Plame was a rogue CIA employee who along with others in her group tried to shanghai the President of the United States in a time of War. Democrats would call that “healthy disagreement”. Reasonably intelligent people call it treason.

Further, Wilson’s trip (which was to actually cover the tracks of his ‘99 trip) was only the beginning as the whole “outing” was nothing more than another orchestrated manuver on the part of Wilson, and the (George Soros funded) Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), along with a little nudges of encouragement (coaching in some cases) from left wing columnists such as David Corn and Nicolas Kristof and Walter Pincus.

The list of accomplishes is long and involved many in the MSM who now wish - since the bow shot missed - for the whole story to go away.

Unfortunately for them that is not going to happen. I don’t think that Wilson is going to let the attacks of the MSM stand and will most likely now start to “give up” (rat) on some of his accomplices. We’ll see, but this could get interesting.

UPDATE: Tom McGuire - “Ouch”.

UPDATE II: Excellent roundup of media intent by Clarice at American Thinker!

UPDATE III: The Wilson’s will continue through the fog!.