Libby trial


Less about the truth and more about politics
I pretty much agree with James Taranto on the Scooter Libby trial.

This was a political show trial, and partisans of Joe Wilson will use the guilty verdict to declare vindication. But along the way we learned that virtually all the claims Wilson and his supporters made were false:

• On his trip to Niger, Wilson found no evidence that contradicted the famous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, contrary to his New York Times op-ed claim.

• Plame, his wife, who worked for the CIA, did recommend him for the Niger junket, contrary to Wilson's denials.

• Plame was not a covert agent under the definition of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, contrary to Wilson's insinuations, which many of his backers, including in the press, presented as fact.

• No one from the White House "leaked" Plame's identity as a CIA functionary to Robert Novak, who received the information from Richard Armitage at the State Department.

Libby stands convicted of lying in the course of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle--but that investigation was undertaken on the basis of a tissue of lies. When Fitzgerald began the case, in 2003, no one had committed any crime in connection with the kerfuffle, and that was fairly easy to ascertain, given that Plame was not a covert agent and Armitage had already owned up to the so-called leak. Fitzgerald looks like an overzealous prosecutor, one who was more interested in getting a scalp than in getting to the truth of the matter.

Frankly, if Wilson lied about his wife and the Niger trip, the rest is all posturing. The case was never more than an attempt to derail the Bush Administration.

That doesn't mean that the Bush Administration hasn't done broken the law and stretched the definition of executive privilege. It just means that this was the wrong issue to confront the White House on. Wilson lied. We knew that before the trial. Just look at the contradicting interviews that he gave years before the trial.

When the entire case started because of the untruths on one man, we should look long and hard at his story and motivations.

This was politics.

Tammy Bruce points out that at least one juror had his mind made up that Libby was the "fall guy."

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - March 6, 2007 at 02:44 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved