The Plame Game in context

American Prospect Online - The Plame Game: "Murray Waas�s latest scoop -- in which he broke new ground with a detailed account of the Bush administration�s deceptions about Iraq -- has won plenty of plaudits already. But its true larger significance is still crying out to be explained.
To do this we need to step back and look at his revelation in the context of the ongoing investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame. If you do, you can see that what once were a bunch of disparate subplots -- the pre-war duplicity, the 2004 election, the Libby indictment, the continuing investigation into Karl Rove -- suddenly can be woven together into one grand narrative that makes coherent sense in a way that much of this story didn�t before. And the resulting storyline is not a pretty one.
Waas's story -- presuming it�s right, and his track record has thus far been admirable -- suggests a plausible motive for both �Scooter� Libby and Karl Rove to have misled the grand jury about Plame. Their motive for doing this has hitherto been rather difficult to explain. Why, many have asked, would Libby and Rove have lied and risked perjury charges about a transgression that may not have been illegal in the first place? Waas�s story suggests a possible answer. "