Follow the Yellowcake Road

There can be no denying that the conviction of "Scooter" Libby has been a blow to the Bush administration, a blow of some significance because it goes to the heart of the case that Bush and his cronies made for manufacturing a war with Iraq and the lengths that they were prepared to go to in order to stop those lies becoming public.

It was always to be expected that the right wing would be incensed by this verdict but, even with those expectations, the reaction of the National Review Online has been astounding. They led yesterday with some eight articles all arguing why the conviction was wrong, why Libby should now be pardoned and why the verdict is not proof that Bush and his cohorts manufactured or manipulated intelligence on WMD. Some of the articles are, most unusually, not signed by one person but labelled under the collective, "The Editors".

I can't possibly deal with such a volume of fantastic nonsense so let me deal with the notion that what we all think has taken place has, in fact, been a "partisan" fantasy.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s reaction to the Libby verdict perfectly illustrates the fantasy version of events that has marked the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation since its earliest days. Reid railed, “It’s about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics.” If that’s what Harry has been waiting for, the Libby verdict shouldn’t satisfy him. Libby was charged neither with manipulating intelligence nor with discrediting critics of the Iraq War.

Libby’s conviction followed from two sentences he uttered in two conversations with two individuals, and neither sentence had anything to do with manipulating intelligence or discrediting a run-of-the-mill war critic. When the words “Valerie Plame” passed the lips of White House aides, it was only to set the record straight after a dishonest partisan accused the Bush administration of lying.

Whilst it's true that Libby was not charged with leaking Plame's name, which was the original crime that Fitzgerald sought to prosecute, he was nevertheless charged with perverting the course of justice - with preventing Fitzgerald from investigating the original crime.

In any whispering campaign that leaves no paper trail investigators are dependent on witnesses giving honest recollections of what took place. Without this, the investigation is bound to fail.

Libby lied to obstruct that investigation. Most of us are working from the assumption that he would not have done so unless there was something to hide.

And you'll notice how The National Review Online see nothing wrong in the outing of an undercover CIA operative as this was only done, "to set the record straight after a dishonest partisan accused the Bush administration of lying."

If the question is whether or not the administration lied, I see no relevance in whether the person making that charge is partisan or not; the much more important question is whether or not the charge is true.

On this the National Review Online Editors say very little:

The administration understandably tried to defend itself by explaining that Joe Wilson wasn’t on a mission from Vice President Cheney, and by declassifying a National Intelligence Estimate so that the rest of us could see the legitimate if faulty intelligence they had relied on.

The simple fact is that Bush didn't declassify a National Intelligence Estimate, he declassified only the portions of that NIE which appeared to support his case and suppressed the parts of the NIE which challenged his assertions.

In other words, he - prodded by Dick Cheney - gave Libby permission to mislead journalists and, in turn, the American public. He did so in order to justify him making a statement in his State of the Union Address which was false. So, he gave permission for Libby to lie about his lie.

When Libby was questioned about these actions by a grand jury and the FBI he lied again. That is what a jury of his peers have convicted him of.

The NRO may be correct in the strict sense that no-one has been convicted of the original crime of the leaking of Plame's name, nevertheless, only the most biased partisan would fail to see the linkage between the lies Libby was telling and the flawed case the administration made regarding Saddam and Yellowcake.

Tags: Bush, Libby, Cheney, Yellowcake, Niger, Saddam, Wilson, Plame Plamegate, Fitzgerald, NRO