The Bush admin have several strong trademarks. Among them:

Never apologise, never sacrifice an insider and most importantly, never rest for a moment in the process of creating the 'new american century'.

Rove, Gonzalez, et al are too meshed in to be dropping off for any reason.

Why are they going? Its not clear yet, but in my opinion it is almost certain to be as part of a neo-con redeployment.

My personal guess is that 9/11 version 2 will be a tactical nuke in Washington DC. Their grip on the reins of power is still loose enough that they want to set up plausible denyability for why none of the inner circle will be at their desks in the swamp the day it happens.

They will, of course, be called back into service on that day as most of the structure of government will have been toasted and Bush's Continuity of Government button will have been pressed.

btw. Anyone noticed how quiet Cheney's been the last few months? I guess he's really busy doing something important and can't spare any time to do photo-ops.

Wonder what could be keeping the Trickster II so busy?