Sorry for missing the big news yesterday; I was overwhelmed with workwork, homework, housework, and taxes. Of course, the Boston Globe editorial is the typical leftist agitprop, and there's no point in even reading the NY Times. But the Washington Post is spot on: Libby broke the law but nobody in the case covered themselves with glory, especially Joe Wilson:
Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.Who is the criminal here? Scooter Libby who tried (overzealously, perhaps) to defend the White House, or the couple who actively sought to undermine U.S. policy with a false analysis on Iraq and baseless allegations? I don't particularly like the idea of a Presidential pardon derailing the mechanism of justice, but this case with no underlying crime is the poster child of the criminalization of politics.
A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.
The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak's primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.
Extra - Mark Steyn: "The real scandal has always been that the world’s most lavishly endowed intelligence agency’s idea of an investigation is flying in a politically-motivated tourist for a long weekend."
More - From Wizbang, juror #10 wants a pardon for Libby.
13 comments:
BERGER - FREE.
LIBBY - JAIL.
BIDEN MISPEAKS.
TRENT LOTT SLANDERS.
CLINTON PERJURER... SO WHAT?
LIBBY PERJURER... IMPEACH CHENEY.
IS THERE A PATTERN HERE???
But the Washington Post is spot on: Libby broke the law but nobody in...
Who is the criminal here?
Um, the one who broke the law?
From Wizbang, juror #10 wants a pardon for Libby.
But that's only because the jury thought Dick Cheney, and particularly Karl Rove, should have been the defendants on trial. You know, for a crime that didn't happen.
(Psst. If juror #10 thought Libby was, you know, innocent, the verdict would have been a mistrial.)
And how about the post-trial public statement by two of the jurors that Patrick Fitzgerald didn't prosecute the case aggressively enough? Guess that doesn't go as well with the delicious red whine being served all across the blogosphere.
Awww. After that encouraging note from the jury. All those confident predictions. All that reasonable doubt. All that online betting. All that "wisdom of crowds."
Although it's been said... many times, many ways... Merry Fitzmas... to yoooou.
To cover his boss' lies, Lewis Libby cheerfully wrecked Valerie Plame's livelihood. Then he denied having done so, even though it was perfectly okay and legal that he did. When caught, Libby invented a conversation with Tim Russert for an alibi, assuming that Russert would never find out he'd done so. Oops!
All the rightwingers' predictions were so dead on. Who wants to go double-or-nothing on another article of faith: "Libby will never flip on Cheney"?
I suppose if you're unable to "frogmarch" Rove out of the White House the way the liar Joe Wilson wanted, you have to settle for convicting someone else of lying in a case where no crime seems to have been convicted. Talk about taking a harpoon to a minnow.
Tsk, tsk, Jorg. Don't you know that inflicting another permanent scar on the White House's credibility and ability to govern, and attaching a 10,000-pound anchor to the (snicker) "Bush legacy" is more than satisfying?
http://hem.passagen.se/muntz/sounds.htm
What a pleasure to have lived through the first Bush term, to get to this point. No President has ever collapsed so completely, so quickly, so humiliatingly, except Nixon and to a lesser extent Grant... and at least they had achievements to mitigate their records.
When Honest George issues the Libby pardon, the farce will be complete.
The conservatives got whiplash this week:
"The Libby trial was reprehensible, a deeply troubling liberal witchhunt by an out-of-control prosecutor who doesn't care how much taxpayer money he wastes to hurt Bush and endanger our country's safety... ...and just because he was found guilty, so what? Libby's small potatoes! You didn't get Cheney or Rove! It's a case about nothing. You moonbats' heads will explode after you realize you're celebrating over NOTHING!"
...Lewis Libby cheerfully wrecked Valerie Plame's livelihood.
Funny how nobody's been charged with actually doing that. Have you been paying attention?
And yes, we right-wingers collectively plead guilty to not being able to divine a jury's intent before the verdict is announced.
We stated with absolute certainty that Libby would be acquitted, but it looks like we lied.
It’s a classic tale with timeless appeal for children of all ages:
The evil king is naughty, naughty.
The brave man says “You can’t do that!”
The king’s men hurt the poor lady, and say “Bwahahaha!”.
The brave man defends the poor damsel.
And there are some people who still cling to this fantasy narrative even after every last piece of the tale has fallen apart. It’s so simple, and it proves everything they want to believe. How can they let go of it?
"The real scandal has always been that the world’s most lavishly endowed intelligence agency’s idea of an investigation is flying in a politically-motivated tourist for a long weekend."
...And one who didn't even want to find what he was supposedly looking for.
Funny how nobody's been charged with actually doing that (wrecking Plame's livelihood). Have you been paying attention?
It's even funnier how two of the jurors are on record as saying they wished they could have rendered a verdict on people who weren't charged at all.
But stick to the meme. This case was about nothing at all... it's a non-crime! The trial was free of any larger context! And Nixon resigned because of a broken hotel lock.
And yes, we right-wingers collectively plead guilty to not being able to divine a jury's intent before the verdict is announced.
We stated with absolute certainty that Libby would be acquitted, but it looks like we lied.
How odd. The post you're responding to reads: "All those confident predictions...All that online betting. All that "wisdom of crowds." ...All the rightwingers' predictions were so dead on." Predictions. Betting. Not a single word about "divining a verdict" or "absolute certainty."
Are you that starved for a win these days that you need to rewrite other people's words before mocking them?
Sweet fairy tale, though. Don't leave out the part where the Prince's best friend tells lies about the town cryer and gets locked in the dungeon, and the evil ice witch seizes the kingdom two years later.
Actually the most troubling aspect is that the CIA (or certain members of the CIA)had the full backing of the MSM and couldn't even run a proper black op against George Bush.
It's about nothing!
"Where's Rove? Where's, you know, where are these other guys?" wondered a juror, Denis Collins, standing on the courthouse steps after the Libby verdict was delivered. Collins said that he and other jurors came to think of Libby as a "fall guy," someone who had certainly committed the crimes of which he was accused but who also was hardly acting on his own.
The opening statement of Libby's attorney seemed to augur a presentation of the "fall guy" scenario. "They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Theodore Wells said, recalling Libby's words to Cheney. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected." Rove, after all, had disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to two reporters, conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first put her name into print, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Rove told MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews that Plame was "fair game." And he offered as his motive for attacking Wilson to another reporter: "He's a Democrat."
In a note entered as a trial exhibit, Cheney expressed his concern that his chief of staff was being thrown to the wolves while Rove was being protected. "Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder," the note read.
Libby and Rove's falsehoods in front of the grand jury, in which they blamed reporters for telling them about Plame, were a cleverly contrived coverup. They did not believe that the prosecutor would be able to break through the curtain of the First Amendment or untangle the tale as told by journalists. Both Libby and Rove relied on the same alibi, hiding behind the press corps that they had manipulated for years and whose erratic habits they knew well. But prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not about to be confounded by this device. He knew the law was on his side, and he received a judicial decision forcing the reporters to testify.
Just as Fitzgerald was about to indict Rove for perjury and obstruction of justice, Rove got a lucky break. A reporter for Time magazine, Viveca Novak, a colleague of Cooper's and privy to his conversation with Rove, became consumed with an overwhelming desire to be an important inside dopester, and she rushed to inform Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, about Cooper's information. Suddenly, Rove produced an e-mail from Cooper that he had not produced to the prosecutor for a year, refreshed his memory, altered his testimony, and was off the hook. (Novak did not tell her editors or Cooper of her freelancing, and she was forced to resign, in effect sacrificing her career to save Rove by the skin of his teeth.) Libby was left to take the fall alone.
Only if Libby and Cheney appeared could Fitzgerald cross-examine them about their discussions with Rove, which presumably Rove had already testified about before the grand jury. Rove was the hostile witness against Cheney whom the prosecution had waiting in the wings, the witness who was never called. If Libby had come to the stand in his own defense, and summoned Cheney as well, Fitzgerald might have been prompted to call Rove from the deep to impeach Libby's and Cheney's credibility and reveal new incriminating information about them. Instead, Libby remained silent, Cheney flew off to Afghanistan and Rove never appeared. Rove was the missing witness for the prosecution.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/03/08/scooter_libby/
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