It’s 6/1 against him having to go

The Dublin-based international betting exchange, Tradesports, has opened a market on whether George Bush’s closest aide and architect of his election victories, Karl Rove, will announce his resignation on or before 30 September 2005. The current price is about 6/1.

The heart of the issue is whether Rove told a journalist that the wife of a prominent critic of the White House’s Iraq polcy was a covert CIA agent and if he did whether this was illegal.

The affair began in July 2003 two months after the “ending” of the war in Iraq when the woman’s husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an article in the New York Times in which he accused the White House of twisting intelligence.

This all happened at the same time as the David Kelly case exploded in the UK and has a number of similarities – the war, how intelligence was used and alleged secret briefings which revealed the identity of Government employees

It is alleged that administration officials leaked the name of Wilson’s wife as a way of undermining him. A Time magazine reporter has said that Mr Rove did not disclose the name of Valerie Plame name, but said the wife of a government critic was a covert CIA agent.

George Bush has a record of being very loyal to those closest to him and although the Democrats are raising the heat we think that Rove will hang on. The price is nice – but not nice enough.

Mike Smithson