'Twas the night before Fitzmas

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/ says that Fitzgerald will release one to five indictments tomorrow. The Financial Times makes a similar prediction. So does John Roberts of CBS:

Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent V alerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be.

Who is Mr. X? Perhaps Dick Cheney. Former CIA analyst Melvyn Goodman has some pertinent observations:

From the first day I was convinced that Dick Cheney was the center of this covert action to lead the country into war, because this is what this is about: the misuse and the secret use of intelligence. It's about that more than it is leaks and sources and even Valerie Plame's identity. It's about how we went to war.

Dick Cheney, I thought, would obtain some kind of plausible denial, because this was run like a CIA covert action. But now he's lost his denial, if he was indeed the source of Valerie Plame's name to Lewis Libby, who then went forward with Karl Rove to give this name to at least five or six journalists and, of course, it was Robert Novak who did the administration's work for it. He was what some people would call the useful idiot, who then ran the Valerie Plame name in his column. But this is now in the White House.

And once, frankly, you had Lewis Libby implicated -- Lewis Libby is just an apparatchik. As an old Soviet analyst, the Libby type is quite recognizable. And you knew that he had to have some sponsorship or endorsement, or he was galvanized in some way by, indeed, his patron. And, of course, his patron was Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, Scott McClellan has, in essence, tossed Rove and Libby into the snow.

Strange, isn't it? A few short months ago, every progressive considered the End of the Rove Era an impossible dream. Now that this goal seems close at hand, we feel unsatisfied. We want more. We want to see a broken Cheney.

As for me -- I'd be dancing a jig right now, if I weren't still smarting over the dunderheaded error committed earlier today. (See the apologetic note appended the previous post.) But please -- don't let my sour mood spoil your Fitzmas. Happy Holidays!