Washington ? The prosecution’s case against White House adviser I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby pulls back the curtain on the Bush administration’s efforts to silence its critics and challenges its rationale for war with Iraq.

The stain on President Bush’s presidency starts with Libby, but it’s not likely to end there, even with Libby’s resignation Friday. The only bright spot for Bush in an otherwise dismal week was that presidential adviser Karl Rove wasn’t indicted, at least for now. Rove, one of the president’s closet confidants, remains under investigation.

The five-count indictment raises new questions about whether Vice President Dick Cheney had any role in revealing the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. A Libby trial almost certainly would delve into internal White House deliberations that could provide more embarrassment for Bush, who’d promised to bring a new ethical climate to Washington.

The indictment came near the end of one of the worst weeks in Bush’s presidency. His approval ratings are at the lowest point since he took office, the American death toll in Iraq topped 2,000, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers withdrew under pressure and his usually loyal conservative supporters served noticed that they’ll no longer march in lockstep behind him.

“Everything seems to be blowing up at the same time,” said Charles Walcott, a political science professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

Bush’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the 22-page indictment, but his reputation is inextricably linked to the case. Even beyond the alleged criminal wrongdoing, the indictment offers an unflattering portrait of a White House with little tolerance for dissent and a no-holds-barred attitude toward its critics.

“It raises questions about the way the White House punishes its political rivals. It’s a White House that is intent on doing anything and everything possible to protect the president, a White House where, in Bush’s own words, you’re either with us or against us,” said William Chafe, a Duke University historian.

According to the indictment, Cheney, Libby and other top officials zeroed in on Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, long before Wilson publicly accused the administration of exaggerating the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Wilson contends that White House officials exposed his wife’s role at the CIA to retaliate for his criticism. Wilson, whom the CIA dispatched to Africa in 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had shopped for bomb-making uranium in Niger, publicly challenged the case for war in a newspaper article and television interviews on July 6, 2003.

The indictment says Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and an assistant to Bush, began digging into Wilson’s background May 29, more than a month before Wilson went public with his complaints. Prosecutors concluded that Libby learned of Wilson’s wife and her CIA job from Cheney on June 12.

The indictment notes that Libby discussed how to deal with news media inquiries about Wilson during a July 12 plane trip with Cheney and other White House officials. Later that day, according to the indictment, he discussed Wilson’s wife with reporters from Time magazine and The New York Times.

Although Wilson was a bit player in the run-up to war, his criticism challenged a key element of the administration’s claim that Iraq had been manufacturing weapons of mass destruction for possible use by terrorists.

Bush’s critics said the revelations in Libby’s indictment pointed to a concerted effort by top administration officials to mislead the American public. Some Democrats called for a congressional investigation.