Red Rover, Red Rover, send the traitor on over.

If Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame's identity to reporters, knowing it endangered her life, the life of agents under her, and compromised the search for WMDs, in Iraq and elsewhere, he deserves more than to be fired...he deserves to be prosecuted as a traitor. As does anyone who shields him.

I find it highly suggestive that both Plame and her husband, the former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, were outspoken in their opposition to this administration's claims of WMDs in Iraq, and such a move as 'outing' Plame was apparently calculated to effectively silence them. Plame’s branch of the CIA was telling the administration that there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq. Tracking such information WAS her job, after all. And we have every reason to believe she was good at it.

The fact that we haven't found WMDs in Iraq wasn't because of an intelligence failure. It was, rather, due to deliberate sabotage of CIA operations in the area guilty of uncovering information the Bush administration didn’t want to hear.

So it appears the ‘outing’ had two purposes. To get back at Joe Wilson for not going along with the script regarding the alleged fissionable materials purchased from Niger, and for Valerie Plame herself daring to contradict the administration’s stance on Iraq and WMDs.

I, personally, find it not only deplorable, but deeply disturbing.