Ding, dong, the witch is dead.....ok, indicted

I don't want to make a habit of "me too" posting, but this bit of news, from Jason Leopold at Truthout, is worth a post and a little dance around the room, pumping one's fist in the air. It seems that Karl Rove has finally been served his papers by Patrick Fitzgerald, on charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

The effect of this on the Bush administration and the GOP will be considerable. The White House will take a PR hit on multiple fronts -

Another criminal in their midst
Another bit of evidence that they knew they were lying about Iraq
Another indication that they care more about politics than national security
Another distraction from their agenda

On the functional front, Rove will be too busy trying to save his buttocks from the mighty boots of Patrick Fitzgerald to pay much attention to the GOP "Dirty Tricks in 2006" campaign.

The third PR point, politics vs. national security, hasn't been emphasized enough. Follow down the chain of events from the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, and the damage looks substantial. She was NOC, non-official cover, meaning that she was posing as a private citizen, meaning that she had no diplomatic passport to protect her if she got in trouble. Ok, so she was at home at the time, but the company that served as her cover was still out there doing business, possibly with another NOC operative working there. She had spent more than a decade building up the cover and the confidence of her contacts in the Middle East. All of that investment is down the tubes.

Looking to the future, the CIA will have much more trouble recruiting sources. If these potential sources think that the White House might vindictively out the person trying to sign them up, would they bite? It's a simple progression: The operative is outed, then the host business is suspect, then anybody who made contact with anybody at the business is suspect, then the local source finds himself in the basement of the local police station receiving non-therapeutic electroshock.

This from an administration and a party that have been staking their decaying reputations on the concept that they can protect us better than the Democrats.

So, getting back to Rove, "Turdblossom" should consider himself lucky to be facing only perjury charges. Considering that Fitzgerald is reputed to consider perjury as not just a serious crime, but also a personal insult, maybe not so lucky.