It's interesting that David Brooks's diatribe on alleged Democratic paranoia with regard to Plamegate appears in the same edition of The New York Times as a review of The Assassins' Gate, George Packer's book about the Iraq disaster. A bit of the review:

...Part of the problem was the brutal and debilitating struggle between the State Department and the Defense Department, producing an utterly dysfunctional policy process. The secretary of the Army, Thomas White, who was fired after the invasion, explained to Packer that with the Defense Department "the first issue was, we've got to control this thing - so everyone else was suspect." The State Department was regarded as the enemy....

... State Department officials were barred from high posts in Baghdad, even when they were uniquely qualified....

Packer describes in microcosm something that has infected conservatism in recent years. Conservatives live in fear of being betrayed ideologically. They particularly distrust nonpartisan technocrats - experts - who they suspect will be seduced by the "liberal establishment." The result, in government, journalism and think tanks alike, is a profusion of second-raters whose chief virtue is that they are undeniably "sound." ...

You want to talk about "the paranoid style in American politics," David? Start there.