Rove and Plame

When I first saw someone saying that Karl Rove is the one who betrayed Valerie Plame, I thought it was a joke, a troll. It's too juicy, I thought. Well, it's true, and this post at Obsidian Wings, lays out the implications:

If Bush knew that Rove leaked Plame's identity, he could have revealed this fact, or, if he didn't want to turn Rove in, he could have asked Rove to resign and allowed him to drift off into the sunset. If, instead, he knowingly kept someone who broke the law and harmed our national security for purely political reasons as one of his advisors, then I can't see how to avoid the conclusion that he just doesn't care about our national security, moral responsibility, integrity, or his constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. If Bush didn't know that Rove leaked Plame's name because he didn't really try to find out, then that same conclusion follows. The only option that allows us to conclude that Bush really does take the outing of a CIA agent seriously is to suppose that he didn't know despite having really tried to find out the identity of the leaker. But, besides being implausible on its face, that raises fairly serious questions about the degree to which Bush is in charge of his own administration.