Joe Wilson Can't Quit When He's Ahead

Things like this are gonna get me back on Rove's side pretty quickly. Wilson is hardly a disinterested observer, after all, and as the always alert Tom Maguire has been saying from day one (and he's now converted Mickey Kaus), the environment in which Rove leaked (illegal or not) was a heavily politicized one (UPDATE 11:45 a.m. central: to be more specific, the line Maguire has taken is that to understand the whole affair, you have to understand the friction between the CIA and the White House that provided the backdrop). Wilson has not been playing fair for a long time now, regardless of how you feel about Rove. It's times like this that are almost enough to scare me away from politics...

UPDATE 11:32 a.m. central: To get some idea of why Wilson would be best served to hang in the background, consider this absolutely essential list of the inaccuracies and falsehoods he was peddling that provide the most convincing reason for Rove's statements to the reporters regarding Wilson's less-than-pure motivations. Truly a must-read (hat tip to AJ Strata)...

UPDATE 2:05 p.m. central: For a different perspective, I refer you to Day Two of Timothy Noah's Rove Death Watch. I find Maguire more convincing, but you be the judge. Noah does include this damning tidbit:

I hold no brief for Joe Wilson. This column has criticized him and his wife for cozying up to the glitterati, even at the expense of allowing Valerie Plame to be photographed without any disguise at the TriBeCa film festival. (Wilson had previously claimed that even after she was outed, Plame couldn't be photographed without a disguise because she needed to be protected from "some wacko in the street." The couple's subsequent decision to position Plame's face before the paparazzi suggests that their previous stance was pure theater.) Furthermore, although Wilson found no evidence that Iraq had purchased yellowcake from Niger, I believe that Wilson ought to have been more forthright about finding evidence that Iraq had indeed made some overtures toward purchasing yellowcake, though not in a way that the Senate intelligence committee deemed terribly significant.

Well, despite the obligatory disclaimer at the end, doesn't that, in fact, make Wilson a liar? And is that not, in fact, what Rove was warning Cooper about?...