Washington is abuzz with rumors about what Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may do once his investigation into the coordinated Republican effort to discredit Valerie Plume's husband finishes. The nuances and details of the Plame Affair ----ie the outing or leaking Plame's identity and CIA affiliation----are beyond me.

The overall picture though is clear:

Clay Bennett

Rove's pointing was part of the "get Joe Wilson" campaign. Joe Wilson had to be got because he criticized the Bush administration's nuclear justifications for the disastrous Iraq war: that Iraq had acquired significant quantities of uranium from Africa. This was one strand of hyping the WMD threat posed by Iraq.

The question is: did Karl Rove, Scooter Libby or any other government official deliberately use classified information as a weapon to retaliate against a critic--one who broke no laws and violated no secrecy agreement by speaking out against the Bush administration?

That is what Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, is looking into. The grand jury expiring on October 28, 2005.

It does look as if the Bush administration used the national security powers of the U.S. government against its own citizens for purely political purposes.

Will Fitzgerald walk away? Will he extend the grand jury for whatever time he needs? Or will he hand down the indictments? Hence the inside-the-Beltway tension. A good assesment.

Still, the White House sure does look beleaguered these days.