This isn't shooting fish in a barrel. Bob Somerby argues there is something to the Luskin/Mehlman defence of Rove. I am not convinced.
Mainly, I agree with Billmon that he "proves it really is possible to be even handed to a fault".

As always, Somerby is amazingly up on the details. In this case, I think he neglects the fundamental absurdity of the argument.

I will argue that the defence of Rove is absurd, then quote a lot from Somerby.

The claim, largely based on a creative reading of Cooper's e-mail to his editor, is that Rove was just trying to warn Cooper not to write that Cheney had sent Wilson to Niger. This is supposed to be the reason Rove said that Wilson was recommended by Plame.

Now, as I have noted before, this allegedly legitimate reason to talk about Wilson's trip did not give Rove a reason to say that Wilson's wife worked for the agency. It would have been equally useful, for that alleged purpose, to say that Wilson was recommended by a career CIA operative without identifying that operative. The the explanation does not explain (let alone justify) the possibly criminal act.

On the issue addressed by Somerby it simply does not make any possible sense for a statement about Plame's role in sending Wilson to be related to an effort to clarify (or spin) Cheney's role. No one could possibly ever have imagined that Cheney did what Plame allegedly did (she denies it). Plame's role was, certainly, to take the message home that the agency wanted to ask a favor of Wilson and, allegedly, to propose Wilson's name.

Cheney's role was, allegedly, to ask the CIA to look into the issue. It is impossible that Rove thought or hoped to convince Cooper that the whole mission was Plame's idea. It is even more absurd to imagine that anyone might have thought that Cheney came up with the name Wilson. Wilson's original op. ed. is (as noted by Somerby) clear on this point. Also it is obvious that the Vice President doesn't propose specific volunteer consultants to the CIA. No one could mix up the roles of Cheney and Plame and thus no mention of Plame could possibly clarify Cheney's role.

The various references, noted by Somerby, to the CIA sending Wilson on Cheney's request don't explicitly explain that they mean that Cheney asked the CIA to look into the matter and did not specifically say "send Joe Wilson" but this is just because the hypothetical confused listener who would imagine that Cheney came up with the name Wilson clearly does not exist. I mean the same shows didn't explain that Wilson is from planet Earth, because few listeners would otherwise imagine that he is from Mars. The point which Luskin claims Rove was trying to clarify is totally obvious. This is why it was explicitly stated in only some of the reports (including Wilson's original Op Ed and the interview edited by Mehlmen to delete Wilson saying the opposite of what the remaining fragments make him appear to say).

I'd like to ask Somerby if he really thinks there is any chance at all that Rove said that Wilson's wife apparently works for the agency in order to clarify (or spin) impressions on Cheney's role in the mission to Niger. I think the answer is no. Thus I think the facts he notes in the part of his post quoted below are not relevant to the question of whether Rove committed a crime or even to the question of why Rove committed the possibly criminal act.

Consider Josh Marshall’s misleading post about a current dispute. Question: Is it possible that Rove was trying to debunk a false story when he spoke to Matt Cooper that day? Marshall, throwing feed to the herd, says that he is shooting down “egregious mumbojumbo” about that. But uh-oh! The alleged “mumbojumbo” isn’t so bad—and Marshall’s claims are misleading and wrong. It’s hard to do, but Josh is spinning so hard he makes Orin seem right by comparison!

Could Rove have had a reasonable motive when he spoke to Cooper that day? Marshall quotes this passage from an AP report about RNC chairman Ken Mehlman:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (7/12/05): Rove "was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise," said Mehlman. Cooper's e-mail says that Rove warned him away from the idea that Wilson's trip had been authorized by CIA Director George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Marshall, Mehlman’s claim is “egregious mumbo-jumbo.” Here’s his response to that quoted passage:

MARSHALL: The argument, as elaborated by others, is that Rove was warning Cooper off Wilson's phoney story because it was about to be debunked by a soon-to-be-released statement George Tenet.

A great argument. Only Wilson never said that. He said that the CIA, following up on a query from the vice president, sent him on a fact-finding mission to Niger.

Was Rove warning Cooper about a bum story—about the claim that Cheney authorized Wilson’s trip? “Wilson never said that,” Marshall says. But uh-oh! That statement by Marshall isn’t quite true. And it’s irrelevant any way.

In his post, Marshall quotes Wilson’s 7/6/03 op-ed, in which Wilson doesn’t exactly claim that Cheney authorized his trip. But Wilson did stress the alleged involvement of Cheney’s office—and you know how that Washington press corps can be! By the time of that evening’s World News Tonight, ABC’s Geoff Morrell was saying this:

MORRELL (7/6/03): Ambassador Joe Wilson says, at the request of Vice President Cheney's office, the CIA sent him to Niger in February 2002. He spent eight days there investigating a British intelligence report that Iraq tried to obtain from Niger yellowcake uranium, which can be used to build a nuclear weapon.

It wasn’t exactly Wilson’s fault. But viewers might start to believe something false; they might start to believe that Cheney’s office sent Wilson off to Niger. And the following morning, Wilson’s juices were clearly flowing when he glad-handed (and semi-misstated) on CNN’s American Morning:

BILL HEMMER (7/7/03): Ambassador Joseph Wilson is back with us here on American Morning live in D.C. Good to have you back! Good morning to you!

WILSON: Hi, Bill, and welcome to Soledad [O’Brien].

HEMMER: Well, it's great to have her.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

HEMMER: It's a wonderful day for us here at American Morning! You went to Niger several years ago. You concluded essentially that Iraq could not buy this uranium from that country. Why not?

WILSON: Well, I went in, actually in February of 2002 was my most recent trip there—at the request, I was told, of the office of the vice president, which had seen a report in intelligence channels about this purported memorandum of agreement on uranium sales from Niger to Iraq.

Was Wilson trying to mislead viewers? We wouldn’t make that charge, but Republicans had every right to correct a misimpression that clearly was out there—the misimpression that Cheney’s office had sent Wilson off to Niger. ABC made the claim that Sunday night—and Wilson seemed to say it the next morning.