The Bush Administration: Down in Plames?

It would be all too corny to call it Plamegate, and unlike Watergate, there isn't one single event that you can use to name it (though then again, nor was there in the case of Watergate when you think about it). What would you call the scandal that is rapidly engulfing the White House? Given the latest revelation, Cheneygate is the latest contender. The New York Times are now reporting that no less than the Vice President himself, Dick Cheney of Halliburton fame (or infame), was the one who leaked the secret that Valerie Plame, the wife of a diplomat who openly criticised the Bush Administration for going to war in Iraq on the basis of flawed intelligence, was a CIA operative, thus destroying her career.

The New York Times claims Cheney passed this information on to his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr, and that Libby subsequently lied about his source under oath. It remains to be seen whether Libby or George W. Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, are indicted for their parts in the scandal.

Unfortunately, the fixed terms in America mean that nobody will have the satisfaction of frogmarching them out of there ... unless it takes less than 4 years for the whole mess to be sorted out, that is ...