From the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, and even going back to his presidential campaign before the 2000 election, the Democrats have followed consistent paths of attack.

One prong was the president was an intellectual dolt, controlled and manipulated by the evil genius of Vice President Dick Cheney, supported by political svengali Karl Rove and pummeled by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his neoconservative cadre of advisors.

Another prong painted a somewhat contradictory picture, one in which the White House lacked transparency, leaks were unlikely and political discipline was tight. Incongruously, however, this clever all-powerful control was said to be in place because of the aforementioned doltishness of the president.

Even allowing for partisan hyperbole, evidence supporting some of the charges has been plentiful over the past six years. The tightly seamed administration dinghy has sprung some serious leaks. On a second glance, it might be mistaken for a sieve.

Leaks concerning the tracing of bank fund transfers and the interception of phone calls involving U.S. citizens in this country created brief firestorms. Those leaks – which were improper and damaging to our intelligence efforts against real enemies – did not appear to come from high-level folks, those in the inner loop. They appeared to come from midlevel types whose motives remain unclear. They either saw themselves as ardent patriots, or they were disgruntled folks with a political or personal grievance.

In the past two weeks, however, The New York Times has garnered two complete high-level, classified memos addressed to the president. The first memo was by Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security advisor, and concerned an evaluation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It was neither a flattering portrait, nor was it a smoking gun supporting a claim of incompetence. But it was not a confidence builder for Maliki, and it was leaked just prior to Bush’s scheduled face-to-face meeting with Maliki and King Abdullah of Jordan.

A miffed Maliki called off a scheduled meeting with the king and the president, while President Bush was in the air. Then, when they did breakfast together the following day, without the king, the staged but torpedoed meeting was simply cold toast. The following news conference was empty of new, or even specific, content, and was overshadowed by the pair’s tense body language and Maliki’s testiness.

That leak was either malicious and damaging, or perhaps simply ill-conceived. It sabotaged any coherent public effort to build confidence on a course change to maneuver the ship-of-state to avoid the rocks, while our scraped bottom gouged through shoal waters.

Who gained by the leak of the internal advisory memo?

It could have been leaked by a small thinker, who felt a way to end the war quickly would be to cripple whatever efforts the administration makes to extricate itself – and us – from a bad situation. It could have been leaked by the administration, to drive home a complex message to Maliki, rather than letting Bush deliver a complex message orally.

The other leak was equally perplexing.

In a memo from Rumsfeld to the president, dated one day before the election and two days before Rumsfeld “resigned,” the secretary stated in his introduction that: “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” Shortly thereafter, the president used almost the exact phrase to answer a question. The memo surfaced in The New York Times on Dec. 3.

The memo lists 21 specific possibilities. Rumsfeld used a form of ranking, but made no definitive recommendations. It reminded me of a Chinese takeout menu, where you can choose one item from column A, and two from column B.

Why did he send it? If he knew he was toast, was it a derrire covering for the archives? Was it the first, or one of many subsequent memos and conversations where he told the president things in Iraq were not quite so good?

Noting Rumsfeld’s book of rules stresses loyalty to the presidential position, did he do it to cover Bush as they waited for the Iraq Study Group report? It covered every possibility, and permitted the administration to say: “Look, we are way ahead of you, we are already looking at the same options.”

That is what they are now doing.

Perhaps in time we’ll learn whether these leaks were really “plants,” bred to flourish and grow in the dark of Washington.

Sarason Liebler of Liberty spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy and is an independent business consultant and frequent contributor of commentary on state and national issues to Maine newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].