Rove : I'll Quit if Indicted

Karl Rove says he'll quit as senior advisor to George W. Bush if he is indicted in the Valerie Plame scandal. It is still not certain whether he will be indicted.

"The special counsel has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges," Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said. "The special counsel has indicated that he does not anticipate the need for Mr. Rove's further cooperation."

But William Kristol, editor of the neo-con Weekly Standard, and chairman of the Project for a New American Century (the real architects of the Iraq invasion and occupation) believes that both Rove and Kristol will be indicted. (Note: Bill O' Reilly thinks that if Rove is indicted, it will be "bad for the country." Not that Rove might have broken federal law, but that he might be indicted for breaking federal law.)

Miller says "she forgot" which high White House source exposed Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative. Okay. Sure. Fine. But we all read her reports on Iraq's WMDs, their links to Al Qa'ida, and their complicity in the attacks on September 11, 2001. And we believed them. Now, we believe she forgets? I think not.

Reports say that Libby and/or Rove were angry that

a dissident faction inside the US spy agency...appeared to work even behind the back of the CIA director to debunk the notion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, some part of the CIA was trying to tell the truth, and were actively opposed by Rove, Libby, Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the White House Iraq Group. Judith Miller's testimony to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury supported the claim that

Libby was concerned the CIA was engaged in a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq and resorted to “selective leaking” of information in order to drive its point home...

In other words, that some part of the CIA was trying to tell the truth, and were actively opposed by Rove, Libby, Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the White House Iraq Group.

And the Times's handling of Miller during the whole WMD fiasco?

Miller "comes away from this heavily damaged and not some sort of heroine of the First Amendment," said Harvard media analyst Alex Jones, a former Times reporter.
...
"If you read between the lines, in a dry and subtle way, (the Times report) raises tremendous concerns about the leadership at the paper," said Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher magazine "Miller basically hijacked the newspaper."

Meanwhile, another five U.S. GIs were killed in Iraq on Saturday when their vehicle was hit by an improvised bomb in the western city of Ramadi. That brings the US death toll to 1,970.