Follow the bouncing Bush

"I have you now!" - Darth Vader

The plot thickens.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former aide to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney currently under indictment for, among other things, having the nickname "Scooter", has told federal prosecutors that President Bush authorized a leak of sensitive intelligence material to the public.

That's nice and all, but what does it mean? Only that George W. Bush may have asked a subordinate to commit a crime and reveal the identity of a CIA agent as a revenge tactic.

Let's start at the beginning.

After 9/11, Bush and his limp-dick underlings were itchin' to crack some Arab skulls. As a result they were desperately looking to make a connection between the attacks and Saddam Hussein, but there was only one annoying little detail: there was none. Turns out the dude with the big black 'stache was Mr. Clean as far as 9/11 was concerned. So they told the CIA to go find a reason to invade Iraq anyway. And the CIA did what it does best: they went out in the field, expertly cultivated sources, obtained sensitive information, carefully analyzed the data, and then just made shit up.

To this end, in 2002, the CIA sent a former ambassador by the name of Joseph Wilson to Africa to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in order to create nuclear weapons. He discovered that there was absolutely no truth to the reports: no African uranium was ever obtained by Iraq. Bush's intelligence advisors read his report and then jumped to the opposite conclusion, asserting that Iraq likely had obtained the uranium.

And a case for war in Iraq was born.

Wilson was livid. He publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence findings -- and his own -- in order to build a false case for war. And although his refusal to shut up pissed the government off to no end there was absolutely no way they could retaliate directly since Wilson was no longer an ambassador and wasn't even actually a CIA agent.

But his wife was.

Now the CIA, in it's mandate for gathering, analyzing and manufacturing intelligence, maintains a certain number of agents on it's payroll. And it's rather touchy about just one thing: their spies' covers being blown. The penalty for "outing" an agent is several years of ass poundings in the showers of a federal prison.

Outing an agent is exactly what Scooter Libby did. He revealed to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent. With her cover now blown, her career was ruined.

Yet the question remains: who ordered the revelation of Plame's identity? Who ordered the "retaliation" against her and Wilson for the latter's refusal to keep quiet about fabricated pre-war intelligence? Who told Scooter to spill the beans to the Times?

It was revealed today that, after his subsequent arrest and indictment, Scooter Libby told prosecutors that George W. Bush himself authorized certain sensitive information to be leaked to the public. While there is no proof -- yet -- that the authorization included blowing Plame's cover, it's not a stretch of the imagination to assume that it did. There was motive, after all.

When the allegation is soon proven, we will be able to add "abuse of presidential powers for personal revenge" to the list of Bush's other transgressions -- misleading the American public, engaging in an illegal war, and illegally spying on Americans to name but a few.

It's scary to think that Bush illegally invades a country and gets away with it, yet Bill Clinton gets impeached and the only thing he's ever invaded is Monica Lewinsky's mouth.