The WaPo isn’t very impressed with the noble Joe Wilson:

…it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Indeed.

No doubt the fever swampers on the left will see this as more evidence of the right-wing agenda of the paper…

[Update in the afternoon]

To use an old phrase, I find the timing suspicious, as does a commenter over at Roger Simon’s place (and Roger’s post on the mental state of the left is worth reading, too):

I wish that the WaPo editorial would not have been published on a Friday before a long, holiday weekend. I hope it was not an intentional attempt to bury the message.

Intentional or otherwise, it could certainly have that effect.