UNRAVELGATE

A third rate burglary. A bungled leak to discredit a political enemy.

All the pieces may not tumble this time, but it's becoming clearer how they might. And how this may not be as big as Watergate---it may be bigger, and deeper.

Because for all the threats and wounds to the Constitution, and all the daunting abuses of power in Watergate, no one died as a direct result.

This time, people are dying all over the world. Americans and Iraqis in Iraq. Londoners in London. People in Turkey, in Afghanistan, and no one knows where next.

Justin Raimondo writes in anti-war.com: This isn't about Rove. It's about a cabal of war hawks inside the administration

He suggest Rove may even have been an unwitting accomplice, though just as involved in the stench.

Now Frank Rich in the New York Times adds this:
...we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

Follow the Uranium - New York Times

This scandal is about Dick Cheney and the neocons, it's about President Bush and all who led America into war under false pretenses, which included lying and covering up those lies, and subverting the very institutions of government they are sworn to uphold and protect.

The lies that the Administration told to invade Iraq and create the chaos that now makes that country a violent incubator for terror all over the world. The violence is growing worse.

Ten suicide bombings in a single day in Iraq. The total number of suicide bombings in the world over the past twenty years was fewer than 400, until this year. In this year, there have been more than 500 in Iraq alone.

This was a war to bring democracy to Iraq. Now a poll in Iraq taken for coalition forces shows this bit of democratic sentiment:

Those who strongly support U.S. and coalition forces: 15%
those who support the insurgents 45%

Watergate was a test of American institutions and the courage of those who understood the stakes. Will they---will we-- step up this time? Who will take responsibility?