Anyhow, the whole WaPo article reads like a cover story, playing up the “revenge” story angle and downplaying Cheney’s link to the Niger memos as being hearsay from Wilson. The fix has been in from the start, as you say.

amen. seems like karl rove is the new oliver north.

and kamachanda, when it comes to protecting their own asses, the asshole brigade is fully competent

In these theories, Rove and Libby oil themselves in the State Department report, completely destroying their status as conduits with deniability that would allow a Miller story to proceed with an “unnamed source” as the name-giver. No way. Who creates a paper sh!t trail and then rolls in it?

And everyone’s backup theory is, “Well, Cheney/Bolton/Hadley/State Dept just told Rove and Libby straight up.” Riiight. Based on their knowledge obtained how? From the INR report? Why not just call the CIA director? Unless of course, you did, and he said he couldn’t/wouldn’t tell you right away, and so you started digging, and started getting fed info from the outside such that you and everyone around you became radioactive. Why not just put some more heat on your CIA director to get moving, or just wait until he tells you the answer?

I just can’t see why Bush, Rice, and Cheney, fully cognizant of the lessons of Watergate and Iran Contra, would follow or become caught up in such a ridiculous plan as is being spun on some blogs with “sources”. In my estimation, Cheney in particular (since he was the one who went to the CIA to clear his name, in response to the original NYT article tagging him as giving the order for Wilson’s trip) would do something far simpler at the outset. The fact that it later came back to bite the entire staff in the ass might be interesting, but it’s not where the big fish swims. Then again, Nixon only would have gone down for obstruction in Watergate, and maybe that’s what will happen to Cheney here and everyone will pat themselves on the back thinking “Oh, that’s all that really happened,” ignoring the logical consequence: It takes the main actor out of their primary role as director/approver/establisher of deniability. It’s like saying Nixon didn’t know about Watergate but tried to cover it up.