Rove, Just a Player?

I am beginning to think that Rove may be a subject of the Grand Jury Inquiry, but not the target. Now, I know that there is a lot of speculation out there as to where Fitzgerald’s inquiry is going. And I have to admit I was squarely on the Rove did it bandwagon, who wouldn’t be? But I have now come to the opinion, and it seems that there are others in the blogosphere who are looking elsewhere as well, that he is just a player, albeit a central one.

I love mysteries, and just like most lawyers, I read them to get the clues and put together the evidence and figure out who done it. Well, most often I can figure it out half way through the book. But, I must read to the end to see if I am right. And, I usually am.

So, that said, I took a wild turn on Thursday when an article appeared in the WAPO in which the ever lovable, and totally credible Douglas Feith (Mr. Cherry Picker of intelligence himself) was interviewed.

The top policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the Bush administration erred by building its public case for war against Saddam Hussein mainly on the claim that he possessed banned weapons.

The comment by Douglas J. Feith, in an interview with The Associated Press, is a rare admission of error about Iraq by a senior administration official. Feith, who is leaving after four years as the undersecretary of defense for policy, said he remains convinced that President Bush was correct in deciding that war against Iraq was necessary.

So, why would Feith come out now and want to push back on the WMD angle on Iraq and why exactly we went to war? What is with the Mea Culpa? Okay, so we never found any WMD, but a lot of folks before the war knew that anyway, oh yes, and Ambassador Joseph Wilson would have been one of those folks.

At the very bottom this whole Plame/Rove/Breach of National Security Scandal, looking for an appropriate “gate” name, is about the WMD and why we are in Iraq, which an inordinate amount of Americans bought into.

And who pushed that rational more than anyone else: why that would be Vice President Dick Cheney!

And who is Dick’s candidate for U.N. Ambassador who worked in the State Department on WMD proliferation: why that would be Bolton. And it appears that the Senators in Bolton's confirmation hearing have presented the Whitehouse with a list of American Citizens whose communications were being monitored by Mr. Bolton at the State Department and that the Whitehouse has refused to turn over those communications.

What kind of odds can I get that Valerie Plame/Wilson’s name is on that list? And who would be in a better place to know about CIA folks working on WMD proliferation than someone tasked with the same issue at State?

Now this is all speculation, isn’t it always, but I say, and I am sure that this communication isn’t “double secret” anything, that Bolton may have told some reporter who could be expected to carry the administrations water. Shall we say a NYT’s reporter who had a history of reliably doing this, with either the memo produced by state one month prior to Ambassador Wilson’s OP-ED piece, or phone conversations after Wilson told his story on the pages of the Gray Lady.

So, like I said this is pure speculation, but the road from Cheney to Bolton to a reporter, and Rove and Libby’s willingness to confirm the allegations seem really pretty basic to me. Now I am not saying that Rove and Libby aren’t involved, they are players and Rove may have even setup the sting, but they are not the big cheese!

However, it all rests in the Grand Jury and Fitzgerald’s hands.

Cheese with that Ham Sandwich, anyone?

Oh yeah, and go read Billmon.