Scott McClellan told the truth

People have been giving Scott McClellan a hard time for his apparent lies regarding Karl Rove and Valerie Plame. But McClellan told the truth, one time.

The Washington Post says

In September 2003, McClellan said that anybody found to be involved in the Plame unmasking "would no longer be in this administration."

I'll assume that Rove was one of the leakers — because everybody thinks so, and because it seems pretty darn obvious. How can we reconcile McClellan's statement with Rove's continued presence in the White House?

It's simple. McClellan's said those words in September 2003, during Bush's first term in office. "This administration" referred to Dear Leader's first administration, which ended in January, 2005. Now we're in Bush's second administration. So McClellan spoke the truth, because nobody is in Bush's first administration anymore, because that administration is over.

What McClellan said was true only in a narrow, technical sense. I suspect he meant to utter a straightforward lie, and a tiny bit of truth crept out by mistake.

This small, lonely scrap of accidental truth doesn't excuse, or even mitigate, any of the lies, misdeeds, and crimes perpetrated by McClellan and his superiors.