Huh?

In a posting last Friday, neo-conservative and Iraq War enthusiast David Frum speculates about which member of the McCain campaign team was responsible for the leaks to the press regarding the ignorance of Sarah Palin on basic facts that her debate and interview preparation revealed.  But he finds the guessing game entirely galling:

What kind of game are we playing whereby people with potentially self-serving motives can place such lethal (but not 100% credible) stories on the public record - unproven, unchallenged, and unsourced, while the people who broadcast the allegations connive in concealing the information that would allow listeners to decide for themselves how credible the allegations are?

Wasn't this the very game that Bush's White House, where Frum served as speechwriter and cheerleader, played with exquisite expertise to sell the Iraq War to the American people, falsely building up the threat of Iraq with anonymous, unproven, unsourced quotes from "administration officials?"

Fudging the facts a bit while whispering in secret to Judith Miller and The New York Times to get the U.S. into a war is one thing, but when it comes to something consequential like whether Sarah Palin knew whether Africa is a continent or a country, it's time to really question the rules of this game.