Liar in the White house
The whole "Scooter" Libby story starts with a lie, indeed, with a tissue of lies. Lies told by an administration determined to remove Saddam at any cost and prepared to "fit the facts around the policy" of removing him.
When Joe Wilson reported the size of the lie told in the President's State of the Union address, the administration took concerted action to silence him, even going as far as to reveal the undercover status of his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA.
When it was revealed that a Federal crime had been committed Bush vowed that whoever leaked the name would no longer work for his administration. However, the message that the leaking of Plame's name sent was unmistakable. "Fuck with us at your peril."
This was an action taken by the neo-cons, either because they believed they were untouchable, or perhaps, because they knew that if Wilson and others were allowed to openly discuss the lies that had led to the Iraq war that the public might eventually learn of just how blatantly the evidence had been manipulated.
As Libby is found guilty and almost certainly faces a prison sentence of some 20 to 27 months, the man most vindicated by the guilty verdict is Patrick J Fitzgerald.
The right wing have rounded on this prosecutor for daring to bring these charges and, had he failed to bring a successful conviction, they would be using a not guilty verdict for Libby as a way to dismiss anyone with any questions over how this administration handled pre-war intelligence as "conspiracy theorists".
As it is, the opposite has happened. The first of the Vulcans has fallen. And he has fallen based on lies told regarding the actions that this administration took against a war critic.
Nor do the ramifications of this verdict stop here, as a member of the jury made plain when he explained the reasoning behind the guilty verdict.
Libby, said Denis Collins, one of the 11 jurors, seemed to be the "fall guy" who had been given the job of talking to reporters by the Vice-President. There was "a tremendous amount of sympathy" for him, Mr Collins said, but in the end they could not believe that a man whose exceptional grasp of detail had been attested to in court had simply forgotten when and with whom he had discussed Ms Plame.He continued:
"It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove, where's -- you know, where are these other guys?' " Collins said. "We're not saying that we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but that it seemed like he was . . . the fall guy."Behind all of this lurks the hand of Dick Cheney. After all it was he who asked that someone look into the claims that Saddam had attempted to obtain Yellowcake from Niger, and it was he for whom the report was collated, a report that he later claimed never to have read; presumably because it did not contain any information useful to the case he was building for war against Iraq.
The other person vindicated yesterday, of course, was Joe Wilson himself. He held a press conference at which he said that the guilty verdict had removed the White House's excuse of being unable to comment because of the ongoing trial and he asked that both the President and the Vice President reveal what they told the Special Prosecutor during the investigation.
Wilson is also to continue with a civil case against the administration which will have, at it's heart, an examination of the rationale and use of intelligence that led to the Iraq war and the campaign against Wilson when he dared to point out that this rationale was based on intelligence which the government knew to be false.
He can only have been aided by yesterday's verdict. Wilson said:
We see this as an affirmation that we are a nation of laws. No man is above the law.The fallout from yesterday's verdict - and the upcoming case Wilson is bringing against the administration - will give us some indication of how far up the food chain that principle is allowed to run.
But some things are clear. The administration has lied. And their lies concerned their reasoning for invading Iraq.
Based on those points alone, this isn't over by a long chalk.
UPDATE:
President Bush has let it be known that he is "saddened" for "Scooter" Libby and his family. Is it just me, or is it inappropriate for the President to express sadness when justice is done?
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