Cutting Off Your Nose

is the kind of political cosmetic surgery the Bush White House practices, but daily it is disfiguring more than its political image. In the ongoing Plamegame, Karl Rove was back testifying to the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury today, in his soap opera attempt to avoid jail. Whatever the legal culpability, the damage to America and the world of an apparent act of cheap political revenge is shaping up to be much worse.

Bad enough to reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent, and one who is running an operation trying to get badly needed information on nations obtaining or building weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible excuse for the Iraq invasion. But now there is emerging news that is more specific on what Valerie Plame was doing, and our worst nightmare is confirmed: she was watching the nuclear program in Iran. Precisely what has the Bushites itching to bomb again.

And because she was outed, her entire operation had to be shut down, leaving the US with great diminished ability to sniff out what is really going on in Iran.

According to Raw Story, the unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad...

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.