Mr. Bush: When Are You Firing Rove?

President Bush is missing an ideal opportunity to shut people like Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry up once and for all on the subject of whether or not he truly is sincere when he declares “I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”

On June 10, 2004, the president said with no equivocation that he would fire anyone in his administration found to have been a leaker in the Valerie Plame case.

For months, Weasel Boy Scott McClellan walked into the daily press briefing and said directly or indirectly that Karl Rove was “not involved” in the leak of the covert CIA operative's name to the media. And we now know as a matter of fact that it was Karl Rove who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

So one has to wonder if Bush is with us or with the terrorists – or others seeking to undermine America's national security.

Plame's husband, Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said it quite well yesterday on CNN.

"I think that Karl Rove should be fired. I think that this idea that you can, with impunity, call journalists and leak national security information is repugnant," said Wilson. "It is not fitting for a senior White House official. It is below any standard of ethical comportment, even if it is not technically illegal, because of the high standard of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. I believe it's an abuse of the public trust. And even if he can't be convicted of it, I see no reason why somebody like that, why the president would want to have somebody like that working on his staff."

While not going into specifics, Wilson then confirmed that there have been threats against his wife's life since she was outed by the White House.

"I won't go into specific threats. I'll tell you that there have been threats," said Wilson. "And as a consequence, we've been working closely with the appropriate law enforcement agencies. We've changed our phone number and taken other security measures."

So now we know that Rove did indeed leak a covert CIA officer's name, we know that her life has been placed in danger because of that and we know there is an incalculable cost for how many other intelligence efforts have been compromised as a result.

Let's hope that Bush truly does for once say what he means and mean what he says. If that is even remotely true, Rove's desk should be cleared out by the end of the day today.