Did Bush Tell the Prosecutor What He Told Us, I.E. a Lie?

Martin Schram makes a very important point in this Ventura County Star newspaper column:

There is only one major question that remains publicly unanswered concerning President Bush in the special prosecutor's probe of the leak campaign to discredit Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson that ended up outing his wife, ex-CIA covert agent Valerie Plame.

It isn't the famous: What did the president know and when did he know it? (We now know a good bit about what this president knew and when he knew it. And what he did after he knew it.)

It is: Did the president tell the special prosecutor's team all the truth he knew, or did he tell them the same thing he told us back then?

We need to know because what Bush was telling us in 2003 — that he knew nothing about the leaks and wanted to find and fire all leakers — ran the narrow gamut from misleading half-truth to bald-faced untruth.

Of course, it is not a federal crime for a president to lie to the American people when he is not under oath. (No, the usual punishment we inflict upon incumbent presidents who lie is to re-elect them.)

But it is a crime for anyone to mislead, impede or lie to federal investigators — whether they are not under oath to tell the truth or not. For a president or a vice president, it can be an impeachable crime. (This point was argued most persuasively by congressional Republicans a few years ago as they made a federal case out of an incident that was not about national security, but consensual oral sex.)

Thanks to Buzzflash for the link.