As we all know, Patrick Fitzgerald was originally appointed to determine whether the revalation of Valerie Plame's status as an undercover CIA agent violated the appropriate law forbidding such revalations. (Forgive me for being scanty on the details of the exact law, I'm hoping commenters will bail me out =o)
Fitz ran a grand jury to determine whather this "outing" charge was legit, but he determined that he couldn't charge or not because the witnesses appeared to be less than forthcoming - in other words, too many lies, he couldn't tell what the f had happened since the witnesses contradicted each other.
So, being a tenacious prosecutor, he had to charge someone with something. Poor Scooter.
But this can't be the end. Why? Jump with me...
From everything I've heard about Patrick Fitzgearld, he is a very serious prosecutor -- he takes his job seriously. His job is to convict law-breakers.
Good for us!
Having been stymied by conflicting BS from the grand jury witnesses regarding the Plame case, he has to decide how to proceed: how can he finish up his "Was the Plame Revalation Illegal" prosecution in the face of contradictory testimony?
From his perspective, it's easy: find someone whose GD testimony seems the least credible based on other witnesses, and charge that person with perjury. Since Fitz is no fool, he'll pick someone who can easily be proved to have been dishontest with the GD. As you can imagine, the prospect among Washington bigwigs of being convicted and sent to even a country club prison for a few years is a big incentive to cooperate.
Once this fellow is facing that perjory conviction, you know what's gonna happen -- he'll flip to save his skin -- and not only flip, but have an incentive to blab his heart out to avoid a few years in the can.
So, my notion is that Fitz is going after Libby because it's a "slam dunk" to convict Scooter, and once he's threatened with the real consequences of f'ing with a federal prosecutor, Scooter will sing like a canary.
Then, Mr. Fitzgerald will use Mr. Libby's testimony to beat the shit out of whover illegally revealed Plame's identity (ahem*cheney*ahem).
The exposer will be exposed, and Patrick Fitzgerald will have completed his appointed task. Good for him, good for us.
That's my two cents anyway. We're in the early innings re Fitz vs. the Administration, I'm predicting that the later innings will be really bad for the Bush administration.