Forget the money, follow the panic

Karl Rove screwed up.

This we know with certainty. He went too far. Perhaps he did not commit an actual crime, but he did panic and he is still panicking. The GOP spin machine is in disarray and poor Ken Mehlman is very shortly going to pop a vein out of sheer cognitive dissonance.

But why?

It's very simple; protect Dick Cheney. This whole thing is about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld fixing the intelligence. Think about it; When Wilson came out on the Niger story -both barrels firing- he connected his trip to Dick Cheney and that is what caused Rove, et al, to panic and to panic hard. They came out of the box swinging hard for Wilsons head -so hard they fucked up- and they are still doing it. Panic that harsh and driving can only come from the deeply held fear that, if the leads are followed to their conclusion,

The. Whole. Story. Collapses.

Everything about the run-up to the war, the actual war and the post war fuckups... as well as the blame-it-on-the-intelligence-community alibi... Gone. History. *poof*

There is nothing, whatsoever, left of the administrations claim of WMD. The 'dodgy dossier' the British used has been completely discredited. The Niger yellowcake story has been thoroughly debunked. And no WMD's have been found... and no evidence of the WMD has been found, nor will be found. Ever.

What remains is to connect all those dots: to learn just exactly how the intellligence could be so bad. There is really only one reason the intelligence could be that bad.

It was made up.

The administration has blamed this on the CIA and Tenet fell on his sword. But it's not the CIA. It's Cheney. It's Rumsfeld.