As usual when one of these stories comes out, my esteemed colleagues on the loony left email me gloating about how Bush is going DOWN this time, man! Usually a few obscenities thrown in for emotional impact.

Wish I had a dollar for every pumped-up soon-debunked half-baked pseudo-scandal they’ve gloated over.

Because here we go again: Bush Authorized Leaks About Iraq, Libby Testified.

President Bush authorized White House official I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to disclose highly sensitive intelligence information to the news media in an attempt to discredit a CIA adviser whose views undermined the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, according to a federal prosecutor’s account of Libby’s testimony to a grand jury.

The court filing by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time places Bush and Vice President Cheney at the heart of what Libby testified was an exceptional and deliberate leak of material designed to buttress the administration’s claim that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear weapons. The information was contained in the National Intelligence Estimate, one of the most closely held CIA analyses of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war.

Fitzgerald said Libby’s disclosure took place as the result of “a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to repudiate” claims made in a July 2003 newspaper article by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was hired by the CIA to evaluate whether Iraq sought nuclear material in Niger. Wilson wrote that “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

”The White House did not challenge the prosecutor’s account of Bush’s and Cheney’s role in orchestrating the effort to discredit Wilson yesterday.