Specifically Vague

Over at Slate John Dickerson observes that despite the immediate sensation created on news tickers across the country yesterday, Scott McClellan's big bombshell announcement really amounts to . . . nothing we didn't know already.

It's not that his frankness in copping to passing along incorrect information isn't a big deal. It's that McClellan, by apparent design, has done so rather innocuously. To wit:

. . . McClellan said the five administration officials had been "involved" in putting out the bogus information. The word was too vague. It could have meant many different things. With respect to Rove and Libby, McClellan was already on the record saying that they'd mislead him. But was he now saying the same thing about Bush, Cheney and Card? If so, why didn't McClellan just say so? I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration knew it. That would be big news, indeed.

Indeed. Emphasis John's. There you have it. The nickel version of what didn't happen yesterday.