Why Rove and PlameGate Tie Into Downing Street

In talking with a few folks yesterday, I found people voicing disappointment that the whole Karl Rove issue is eclipsing discussion of the Downing Street Memo documents and the leadup to war. But, as I said to them, these are not two separate entities.

What the Downing Street documents tell us is that the Bushies were going to war come hell or high water; that's why they had about five or six different excuses for doing so that they brought out as often as possible (freeing the Iraqis, protecting America, securing the oil, stabilizing the Middle East, et al).

Rove's outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA covert operative specifically working in the field of WMD, was just another facet of the whole game plan. Joe Wilson was sent in to investigate the Niger "yellow cake" claims. When he returned, he reported to the White House that these claims were not credible. Once he saw that the WH was completely ignoring his reports, he went to the media as in his op/ed with the New York Times. Now, the Bushies make it sound like he went right to The Times but that is clearly not true.

Once he did that, Rove as the Bushies dirty trickster decided to neutralize Wilson by outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, to journalists he felt would play ball, like Bob Novak, Matt Cooper, and Judith Miller. Then Novak ran the story that outed Plame and the rest, as they say, is history.

So don't think of these as two separate issues. The outing of Plame was done to try to cover up the fact that the Iraq War was cooked. This is how little the Bushies care about anything but their game plan that they would hide the truth and endanger the lives of Plame and others working with her so they could keep up with their plans for Iraq.

I don't think Rove should resign. I think he should be FIRED. More than that, I believe he should be indicted and tried for his crime. This is also part of what needs to happen to clear the deck of the lies that brought about the Iraq War.