Confused about Plame/Rove affair? Garrison Keillor clears it all up

Is all of this talk about Valerie Plame (whose alias is Mrs. Wilson) getting a little too confusing for you? Having trouble keeping track of just who said what to whom, and what the President knew and when he knew it, if he in fact knew anything at all?

Well, don't worry your pretty little head about it. Garrison Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion fame, also writes a mean political analysis, as you'll find in the Chicago Tribune today. Some excerpts, just to give you a feel for his insight:

I feel it's time for me to step forward and tell what I know about Karl Rove's conversation with columnist Robert Novak in which Mr. Novak reportedly told Mr. Rove that CIA operative Valerie Plame had been responsible for her husband, Joseph Wilson, going to Niger to debunk the White House's claim that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium in Africa to make nuclear weapons and that's why we invaded Iraq, and Mr. Rove said, "Yes, I've heard that too." Mr. Rove has been accused of revealing the identity of a covert intelligence officer. This simply isn't true.. .

Later, after some background, we get this:

I called Sen. Kerry to alert him and he said he had heard that too, and then switched over to French and said, "My wife is a suitcase," or words to that effect.

Could Teresa Heinz Kerry be carrying uranium in a suitcase? Ms. Plame mentioned the possibility to the president and found Mr. Bush oddly detached. "Yes, I heard that," he said, vaguely. The radio receiver was still on his back but the earpiece had fallen out. As a young man, under cover of the National Guard, Mr. Bush had masterminded a clandestine CIA operation that infiltrated a ring of draft-dodgers and gathered important information about them, such as which bars they frequented and how much they drank. He is comfortable in an undercover role. He has cut many trails through the brush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch and can slip undetected over the Mexican border while his double, an El Paso Realtor named Craig Selin, stands in for him at press conferences and other ceremonial events.

Give yourself a break and read the whole thing.