Jury Fixes Scooter's Wagon

[Ted]

Including Obstruction of Justice and False Statements to FBI
And all to promote Bush’s Mendacious Arguments for going to war in Iraq
The Truth Wins Out Yet Again

Edited to include: Yet Cheney should be the one sitting in Jail for a year

[Administrator's Edit: Ted graciously allowed me to rename this thread with Rob's hilarious title. I thought it was too funny and too clever to lie buried in the thread. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, Rob.]

[RebLem]

Aw, Geez, I wish you had waited for me to post this. I had a much snappier headline:

Jury Fixes Scooter's Wagon

[Corlyss_D]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

[karlhenning]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

Ah, so you do not believe that Libby received a fair trial? That there ought to have been a Change of Venue?

Cheers,
~Karl

[Ted]

CD Writes:

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal.

Oh please Utah! OJ?
Libby deliberately lied to cover up the gaggle of elected/appointed liars who are currently giving you and Barry the illusion that you are somehow better off now that the USA has occupied a mid-east country---Feeling safe are ya?

[Corlyss_D]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

Ah, so you do not believe that Libby received a fair trial? That there ought to have been a Change of Venue?

Change of venue? He should never have been charged in the first place. Perjury is the Special Prosecutor's revenge charge: he can't make anything of substance stick, so he charges someone with perjury to justify the years and millions spent on the investigation. Libby was doomed the minute he was indicted in the District.

If I'd known in 1973 what I know now about District juries, who routinely exonerate mass murderers and low-life drug dealers to return them to District communities where they ply their trades, while routinely convicting Republican politicians brought before them, I would never have been so triumphant about Nixon's indictment. He would have been convicted if he had ever gone to trial, not for his crimes, but because he was a Republican, symbol of all the District residents revile.

[RebLem]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

Is that why they deliberated for more than a week?

[Corlyss_D]

Edited to include: Yet Cheney should be the one sitting in Jail for a year

The jurors said so too. They wanted everyone else in the dock. Now let me ask you, and answer honestly, don't you think that demonstrates just a teensy weensy bit of pre-judgment and indifference to the evidence, the standard of proof applied, and their obligations as a jury? The question they asked Friday showed there was a minority in the room who understood what "beyond a reasonable doubt" meant, and they rest didn't give a rip.

[Corlyss_D]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

Is that why they deliberated for more than a week?

Well, obviously from the question they asked Friday there was a minority who took their duties seriously. They finally caved. They should have stuck to their guns and rendered the jury hung. I seriously doubt the SP could have justified a retrial.

[Ted]

Ahh CD, what shall we ever do with you?
This is not about juries and intercity panels and Dems and Republicans, it’s about lying the country into war—You seem to think it’s OK—“If Bush had to lie to worm his way into Iraq then so be it” I’m betting that’s your take
But the majority of the country won’t accept that.
The worm is about to turn
Congress will now start asking the real tough questions
Sooner or later the oaf-in-chief has to be accountable

[Corlyss_D]

This is not about juries and intercity panels and Dems and Republicans,

Yeah, now that your side got its pound of flesh, its suddenly about bigger issues.

it’s about lying the country into war

That happened only in you lefties' hallucinations. No amount of evidence to the contrary can penetrate that collection of self-gratifying lies you guys have set up around your hatred of Bush.

[Donald Isler]

One doesn't need self-gratifying lies at this point to hate Bush. He's done so much to earn it!

[karlhenning]

Yeah, now that your side got its pound of flesh

What was that about hallucinations? :-)

Cheers,
~Karl

[Ted]

CD Writes:
Ted wrote:
This is not about juries and intercity panels and Dems and Republicans,


Yeah, now that your side got its pound of flesh, its suddenly about bigger issues.
Quote:
it’s about lying the country into war


That happened only in you lefties' hallucinations. No amount of evidence to the contrary can penetrate that collection of self-gratifying lies you guys have set up around your hatred of Bush.

What evidence is there to confirm the veracity of this warning Bush made every day for months preceding “Sock and Awe”


”If Saddam does not disarm we will disarm him”

Was Niger Selling Uranium to Saddam? No

Did Saddam have any weapons to “Disarm” No

Your turn honey

[karlhenning]

Including Obstruction of Justice and False Statements to FBI

The 'predictable partisanship' of some notwithstanding, this has the look of a fair cop.

Sure, Cheney should be on trial even more -- and, be it noted, this trial was an important public process in demonstrating this. But no one held a gun to Scooter's head; if he had had principles, he was at liberty to exercise them.

Cheers,
~Karl

[Barry]

So Ted obviously either thinks the Clinton administration and the intelligence services of all our western allies were also lying about Saddam having WMDs or is too thick to comprehend the difference between lying and giving false information that you believe to be true when you say it.

Which one of those two is it, Ted? There really isn't any other viable choice in light of the shallow way you frame the issue.

[Ted]

Talk about being "Thick" Barry....to wit

"... In matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."
-- Joe Lieberman

[RebLem]

As foregone a conclusion as OJ's acquittal. He's a surrogate for all the Republicans the District residents - 98% Democratic, 70% government employees and union members, 77% black - despise.

Is that why they deliberated for more than a week?

Well, obviously from the question they asked Friday there was a minority who took their duties seriously. They finally caved. They should have stuck to their guns and rendered the jury hung. I seriously doubt the SP could have justified a retrial.

OK, we've read the Bushie toadie spin, now for just a few facts.

Here's a fact which Corlyss is hoping you will forget: the investigation began in the summer of 2003 with a CIA referral to the Justice Dept.

Here's another fact which Corlyss is hoping you will forget: the Justice Dept., usually resistant to any suggestion they might be partisan, decided that even they couldn't sell that idea in this case and make it stick, so they decided to appoint a special prosecutor.

Here's another fact which Corlyss is hoping you will forget: the special prosecutor is Patrick Fitzgerald, a Republican who began his service in the Justice Dept in NYC prosecuting Mob cases and doing a bang-up job.

Here's another fact which Corlyss is hoping you will forget: Patrick Fitzgterald went on from NY to become the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois on the recommendation of then US Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL, and Barack Obama's predecessor as the junior senator from Illinois), as honest a Republican as you are ever going to find. Scion of a major downstate banking family, Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) was a graduate of Dartmouth, having majored, believe it or not, in Greek and Latin. Peter Fitzgerald, though a Republican, was persona non grata in Illinois Republican politics, because he actively opposed and brought attention to corruption in his own state party. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois (who now stands convicted of federal crimes as a result of Patrick Fitzgerald's assiduous efforts), hated Peter Fitzgerald so much that in his State of the State speeches, never mentioned him, but always made a special point of thanking Democratic Senator Dick Durbin for helping bring pork back to Illinois. Seeing to it that Patrick Fitzgerald, who knew no one in Illinois and was beholden to no one, got the job in the Northern District was Peter Fitzgerald's way of sticking it back to George Ryan.

[Ted]

Hey Barry---More good news for you… they’re pouring it on "Thick"

The verdict came amid a seeming torrent of bad news for the White House.

"Another red-letter day for the administration," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was President Reagan's final White House chief of staff, noting other news on Tuesday — the deaths from a bomb attack in Iraq, congressional hearings on neglect of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a "happy-talk speech" on Iraq by Bush to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"This cascade of bad news doesn't stop, and it's catching up to them," Duberstein said, referring to Bush and Cheney.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines

[Barry]

Hey Barry---More good news for you… they’re pouring it on "Thick"

The verdict came amid a seeming torrent of bad news for the White House.

"Another red-letter day for the administration," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was President Reagan's final White House chief of staff, noting other news on Tuesday — the deaths from a bomb attack in Iraq, congressional hearings on neglect of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a "happy-talk speech" on Iraq by Bush to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"This cascade of bad news doesn't stop, and it's catching up to them," Duberstein said, referring to Bush and Cheney.

And we all know any bad day for Bush (the liberals' only real enemy), no matter how bad it is for the country, is a good day for Ted, because he gets to say "I told ya so." I actually saw Democrats in my office high fiving over the Libby verdict, as if it were a sporting event.

I"m not sure what kind of reaction you expect from me, Ted. You know I accept that bad things happen in war......people get killed.....and cutting and running isn't going to make us safe; in fact, it will make us less safe in the long run.
As for the other news, I don't think I've even commented on Libby or Walter Reed on here. Perhaps you think the VA Hospitals were all run to perfection until Bush came into office, when he promptly instructed the people responsible for running them to start treating the patients like excrement.

Bush can't run for office again. He's not going to get kicked out of office and he clearly doesn't care about the polls (if he did, he'd have set a withdraw date by now). And in spite of all his problems, most polling has the two most likely GOP presidential nominees doing fairly well (either ahead or neck and neck) against the most likely Democratic nominees.

[Ted]

I"m not sure what kind of reaction you expect from me, Ted.

I’ll tell ya what Barry—Any reaction from you about Bush that doesn’t include a half-baked excusatory allusion about what Clinton did or didn’t do or knew or didn’t know would be terrific— for you that is—Consider it a lesson in humility as well as an appreciation of reality

[Barry]

I"m not sure what kind of reaction you expect from me, Ted.

I’ll tell ya what Barry—Any reaction from you about Bush that doesn’t include a half-baked excusatory allusion about what Clinton did or didn’t do or knew or didn’t know would be terrific— for you that is—Consider it a lesson in humility as well as an appreciation of reality

Ted,
The next time you recognize reality will be your first. Virtually every argument you make related to national security/international affairs is based on a world that has never existed and never will.

[Ted]

Go back Philly Man and read what Ken Duberstein, chief of staff to your hero Ronald Regan has to say.

[pizza]

Better yet, read the following:


Libby's "Guilty": So What?
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 7, 2007

The nearly-four year investigation of the Valerie Plame leak ended yesterday with one of the most derivative convictions in the history of Washington jurisprudence: Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted of offering misleading testimony to an inconclusive investigation of a non-crime. Special Investigator Patrick Fitzgerald knew at the outset of his investigation that outing Valerie Plame was not a criminal offense, that antiwar dove Richard Armitage leaked her name, and that the administration had acted to refute lies Joseph Wilson told during wartime. Pushing forward his inquiry under these circumstances looks very much like either extravagant self-justification or entrapment. It is by no means an indictment of prewar intelligence, as the Left contends.

The Problems with the Case: Procedural Questions About a Procedural Crime

Today’s Washington Post reveals Fitzgerald’s motivation: he wanted the scalp of Dick Cheney. R. Jeffrey Smith reports that Fitzgerald targeted Libby out of “pique at his inability” to nab Cheney, “the man behind the screen, pulling the switches and levers” of his minions. Smith concludes, “Although Cheney was the target, Fitzgerald's investigation could not reach him because of Libby's duplicity.” This explains why he advanced an incredibly weak case. How weak?

“Almost every witness would misspeak on direct [questioning] or left something out of grand jury testimony or got a date wrong,” said Ty Cobb, a former assistant U.S. attorney who heads the white-collar criminal defense group at Hogan & Hartson. He expressed skepticism that the case against Libby should have been presented to a jury.

The jurors called administration official Ari Fleischer “Slick Willie” and said reporter Judith Miller’s “memory was terrible.” During deliberations, they often thought sending Libby to jail “sucks.”

Judge Reggie B. Walton placed tight restrictions on Libby’s counsel, which hampered a full defense. However, the defense brought some of these upon itself – by pandering to the leftist prejudices of D.C. jurors: Scooter Libby, too, was the victim of a vast, right-wing conspiracy! Ted Wells’ opening statement portrayed Libby as a scapegoat for Karl Rove. Then, as Time magazine noted, “The defense never offered any testimony to back up the claim, and by the end of the trial, it was largely forgotten.” Wells also suggested Libby and Cheney would take the stand. Judge Walton punished Wells’ failure to follow through on both counts. Walton had already barred counsel from tellig the jury Plame was (apparently) not covert, and no underlying crime had been committed (although Fitzgerald disregarded this rule, saying Libby’s actions could have gotten someone “arrested, tortured, or killed”). In alleged retaliation, he restricted evidence that would discredit the prosecution’s star witness. Juror Denis Collins said Tim Russert’s testimony was the “primary thing that convinced us on most of the counts,” but Walton forbade documents showing gaps in Russert’s memory. He also disallowed Wells to demonstrate how taxed Libby’s memory was during his summation. First, Walton gutted the defense Libby could present, then he took away the main pillar Libby managed to salvage. Unfortunately, Wells’ demagoguery is the only thing the American people recall about the trial, encapsulated by Collins’ reaction: “Where is Rove and all these other guys?...I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells [his lawyer] put it, he was the fall guy.”

If Judge Walton’s restrictions on the lawyers was bad, his interaction with the jury was nearly criminal. On Monday, the jury asked whether reasonable doubt meant “it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event.” This would mean Libby is presumed guilty and must prove himself innocent. Although both Prosecutor Fitzgerald and defense attorney Wells agreed the jurors were off-base, Judge Walton responded:

Humanly possible is just a nebulous term. They might be asking whether the government has to prove guilt beyond all doubt. I don't know. (Emphasis added.)

Thus, both the judge and the jury were clueless about the most fundamental criteria of the judicial system, giving new meaning to the term “blind justice.”

The jury also seemed not to understand the charges. Last Wednesday, the jury queried whether Libby were charged with lying to Matthew Cooper of Time. (He was not; thankfully for Democrats, it is not against the law to lie to the media; see below.) Their specific question was unclear, and before Judge Walton could respond, the jury wrote back: “After further discussion, we are clear on what we need to do. No further clarification needed. Thank you. We apologize.” Their underlying question, and their self-directed answer, remain mysterious to everyone.

So does the import of this case.


Lies and the Lying Leftists Who Tell Them

Some envision an ever-widening probe, or a back room deal in which Libby rats out his former puppet-master. Blogger Andrew Sullivan thinks it’s time to consider impeaching Cheney, and Hardball’s Chris Matthews has long believed in the inherent evil of Vice President “Chee-nee.” The Left’s fantasies aside, Fitzgerald has declared, “the investigation was inactive prior to the trial...I do not expect to file any additional charges. We’re all going back to our day jobs.” Leftists, too, have resumed their day jobs, which consist of slandering the president and undermining their nation’s morale during a war.

If they cannot count on future indictments, they can at least make the most of this conviction by perjuring themselves in the court of public opinion. John Kerry – who asserted “No one in the United States should try to overhype” Iraq’s first democratic election in half-a-century – regarded the tainted, third-generation conviction on providing questionable testimony as the mighty Angel of Vengeance, stating, “This verdict brings accountability at last for official deception and the politics of smear and fear.”

In this, he truly represented his party, which continues its mendacious campaign to portray the Libby indictment as the leftist Third Secret of Fatima. Within minutes, Chris Matthews replied in a fit of oratorical onanism, “This is all about the war in Iraq.” This despite the fact that Plameologist Matthews knows full well Fitzgerald specifically stated, “This indictment is not about the war.” Matthews pivoted, “Of course, it's a perjury case, but to limit itself to the legal aspects is to limit the Alger Hiss case of 1950 – that great Cold War spy case – to the simple matter of perjury.” Joe Wilson also got the talking points, parroting: “Convicting [Libby] of perjury was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion or Alger Hiss of perjury. It doesn't mean they were not guilty of other crimes.”

It is a great injustice that thanks to the Left's manipulation of the truth, the average American will think this trial has anything whatever to do with prewar intelligence. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lied this somehow shows a disregard for national security:

Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual. This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information […as opposed to John Deutsch?] and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – picking up from the last time he chose to grandstand about this case, closing the Senate – opined: “It's about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct.” Howard Dean seconded, and presidential candidate John Edwards agreed Libby “should absolutely not be pardoned.” [1]

Arianna Huffington provided their rationale on her vanity blog: “Libby was found guilty not just of perjury but of obstructing justice – obstructing justice in order to encumber the investigation and keep secret the dark, ugly truth about how the White House sought to cover up its lies.” No, no, that would be Susan McDougal, pardoned during the last administration without outrage from Pelosi, Reid, et. al.

The Nation’s David Corn (and Chris Matthews – noticing a pattern?) attempted to maximize the importance of the conviction. Libby, Corn blogged, “is the first White House official convicted of a crime since the Iran-contra scandal.” This is true only insofar as President Clinton confessed, avoiding conviction by admitting conduct “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” For this, his law license was suspended and he had to pay a $25,000 fine. Libby managed to get indicted without paralyzing the federal government during a sustained, two-year crescendo of terrorist attacks.


The Real Injustice



If Scooter Libby deliberately obfuscated a federal investigation – even one that should not have been pursued – his verdict would be well deserved. Unlike Bill Clinton’s perjury, reasonable people can differ about Libby’s memory. It is incontestable the time and money of this probe could have been better applied elsewhere – say to Sandy Berger. For that matter, there are more hardened criminals on MTV’s “Juvies.” Certainly, the conflicted witnesses, constricted debate, and botched jury instruction leave room for reasonable doubt.

Yet the greatest outrage of the Libby conviction is the way it has stained Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush administration while enriching Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame.

As we not know, Fitzgerald was obsessed with tying Dick Cheney to Richard Armitage’s leak. In a classic fit of projection, Fitzgerald has smeared Cheney as being “obsessed with Wilson” in the aftermath of the ambassador’s fallacious op-ed in the New York Times claiming the president lied about Iraq’s attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. As always, the media’s ability to frame the question has worked to its advantage, presenting self-defense as aggression and a longing for exoneration with vengeance. Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of knowingly lying about Niger. Missing from the media spotlight is the fact that Wilson has proven himself one of the most accomplished liars in recent political history, lying non-stop from the moment he went to Niger to shoot down “this crazy report.”:

* Wilson claimed Vice President Cheney dispatched him to Niger; Cheney did not even know of his trip.
* Wilson claimed his wife “had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.”; however, Plame wrote a memo successfully advocating her husband be chosen for the assignment (based in part on the fact that he had “lots of French contacts”).
* Wilson dissembled that he wrote a report of his activities; he never laid pen to paper.
* Wilson said his trip uncovered no evidence of Saddam Hussein’s attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium; the CIA agents who debriefed him averred that his testimony “lent more credibility” to the notion Saddam had.
* Wilson claimed he saw the documents the uranium claim was based on, and they were forgeries, because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong”; however, the CIA did not have these documents until eight months after Wilson left. In this case – in which Wilson, not Libby, remembered things that never occurred – he sheepishly claimed he had “misspoken.”

The difference between Joe Wilson’s proven lies and Libby’s theoretical ones could not be more stark: Libby’s endangered no one, while Wilson’s undermined the commander-in-chief while U.S. troops were in the midst of a hot war. Neither could their recompense be any more divergent. Libby faces 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine. Meanwhile, the Plame-Wilsons will proceed with their lawsuit against the Bush administration for “outing” Plame, field an offer from Hollywood heavyweight Jerry Zucker to make a biopic (which I believe is tentatively titled, “The Protocols of Learned Scooter Libby”), and Valerie Plame will follow her husband’s bestseller with a $2 million book deal of her own. The disgraced ambassador said his wife “wept” – tears of joy – “when she heard the news” of Libby’s conviction. The status-driven social climbers are crying all the way to the bank.

Patriotic Americans, dedicated to winning the War on Terror – or who simply believe in the ideals of truth and decency – cry, too.

ENDNOTES:
1. Hardball. MSNBC. March 6, 2007.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... p?ID=27278

[Barry]

Go back Philly Man and read what Ken Duberstein, chief of staff to your hero Ronald Regan has to say.

I'm aware of what he said (although I somehow doubt he said it with the gusto, and maybe even glee that you posted it). But you still just don't get it, Ted. Bush is still going to be president for almost two more years. I've never voted for him, and I certainly am not happy that soldiers aren't getting proper care in VA hospitals (and I frankly don't care what happens to Libby), but while we're at war, I'm sure as hell going to support efforts to win that war, or at least avoid a worst-case scenario. You may get more of a rush out of saying I told ya so than standing behind our troops mission, and I could be doing the same thing since you and I made virtually identical predictions before the Iraq invasion on the delphi board, but what exactly does it accomplish other than proving our enemies' predictions that we don't have the will to fight them longterm?

[pizza]

And another From the Wall Street Journal

OpinionJournal

March 7, 2007
11:33am

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Libby Travesty
Mr. Bush owes the former aide a pardon, and an apology.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

The word "guilty" had barely crossed the airwaves yesterday in the perjury case of Scooter Libby before critics were calling it proof that President Bush "lied us into war" and demanding that Dick Cheney be strung up next. Maybe now Mr. Bush will realize that this case was always a political fight over Iraq and do the right thing by pardoning Mr. Libby.

The conviction is certainly a travesty of justice, though that is not the jury's fault. The 11 men and women were faced with confusing evidence of conflicting memories in a case that never should have been brought. In the end, they were persuaded more by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's story line that Mr. Libby, a former aide to Mr. Cheney, had lied to a grand jury about what he knew when about the status of CIA official Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson.

In hindsight, the defense seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the "fall guy" for others in the White House. That didn't do enough to rebut Mr. Fitzgerald's theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.

For that, in essence, is what this case is really all about. We learned long ago--and Mr. Fitzgerald knew from the start of his probe in 2003--that Mr. Libby was not the source of the leak to columnist Robert Novak that started all this. Mr. Libby thus had no real motive to cover up this non-crime. What he did have strong cause to do was rebut the lies that Mr. Wilson was telling about the Administration and Mr. Cheney--lies confirmed as lies by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004.

Mr. Libby did talk to some reporters about the Administration's case for war in 2003, and he did mention Ms. Plame in some cases. So the jury apparently decided that, when asked about those conversations by the FBI and grand jury, he had lied about his own sources of information about Joe Wilson and his wife. In other words, he has not been convicted of lying to anyone about the case for war in Iraq, or about Mr. Wilson or his wife.

Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it. One tragic irony is that if Mr. Libby had only taken the Harold Ickes grand-jury strategy and said "I don't recall," he probably never would have been indicted. But our guess is that he tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide. This may also explain why Mr. Libby never retained an experienced Beltway attorney until he was indicted.

None of this has stopped critics of the war from trying to blow this entire case into something far larger. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the conviction as proof that the White House tried to "manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But the charges against Mr. Libby had nothing to do with intelligence, and Mr. Wilson was himself so discredited by summer 2004 that the John Kerry campaign dropped him as a spokesman once the Senate exposed his deceit.

What Mr. Reid and others are doing is showing how much all this really has been about a policy dispute over Iraq. The fact that they are now demanding Mr. Cheney's head is further evidence of the political nature of this entire episode. But it should also be a warning to Mr. Bush and his advisers that they too bear much responsibility for Mr. Libby's conviction.

Rather than confront Mr. Wilson's lies head on, they became defensive and allowed a trivial matter to become a threat to the Administration itself. They allowed Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself and Mr. Fitzgerald to be appointed even though Justice officials knew that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been the first official to leak Ms. Plame's name to reporters. Mr. Libby got caught in the eddy not because he was dishonest but because he was a rare official who actually had the temerity to defend the President's Iraq policy against Mr. Wilson's lies.

As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe. But they too will pay a price for holding Mr. Fitzgerald's coat. The Bush Administration will soon be history, but the damage Mr. Fitzgerald has done to the ability to protect media sources and to the willingness of government officials to speak openly to reporters will last far longer.

Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible. The time for a pardon is now.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial ... =110009753

[Ted]

Barry Wrote:(

although I somehow doubt he said it with the gusto, and maybe even glee that you posted it).

Now you’re really starting to worry me Barry. I included the URL so you can read Duberstein’s comments for yourself, I simply copy and pasted. You’re the one who thinks we should tailor the news for your self-serving purposes-- not me.
I’d love to go back and round up all your “I’m not happy with the way things are going BUT….” equivocations.
You may as well have voted for Bush…I’m beginning to think you have a lot more in common with him (sadly) than I previously thought

[RebLem]

Ted, thanks for changing the headline.

I wonder if anyone has noticed that, as the number of people who are on to the Bushies' game grows, their dwindling number of supporters start more and more to behave with the ourtrageous anger of the last holdout for conviction in Twelve Angry Men.

[Ted]

Rob
I’ve spent a career writing headlines, which means I’ve spent a career having others trying to rewrite them—Yours was a good one, I’m happy to oblige with the real effort going to Corlyss

As for 12 Angry Men, I nominate Barry for the Lee J Cobb character

[Barry]

As for 12 Angry Men, I nominate Barry for the Lee J Cobb character

Thanks, but I'm related to Klugman, so I'll go with him; mild-mannered though I may not be.

You, on the other hand, are the guy who has tickets for the baseball game. Better that you "cut and run" to get to your game than worry about the fate of the accused. Besides; you were able to intuit the facts of the case as soon as you saw the defendent .

[Corlyss_D]

I wonder if anyone has noticed that, as the number of people who are on to the Bushies' game grows, their dwindling number of supporters start more and more to behave with the ourtrageous anger of the last holdout for conviction in Twelve Angry Men.

You wish . . .

BTW it was my idea to change the title of the thread, as you will note from my added comment in Ted's original post. You can thank him for being a graciously consenting adult.

[RebLem]

I wonder if anyone has noticed that, as the number of people who are on to the Bushies' game grows, their dwindling number of supporters start more and more to behave with the ourtrageous anger of the last holdout for conviction in Twelve Angry Men.

You wish . . .
BTW it was my idea to change the title of the thread, as you will note from my added comment in Ted's original post. You can thank him for being a graciously consenting adult.

OK, TY, too, Corlyss.

[Corlyss_D]

On Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" Tuesday night, super-lawyer David Boies said Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald's contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... andal.html

Jury composition was even more stacked than the usual DC jury: Denis Collins, the juror who has been making a name for himself demonstrating the jury's lack of objectivity, is a Washington journalist who worked for Woodward on WaPo. Talk about the fox in the chicken coop! What were Libby's lawyers thinking when they accepted him? I'm sure we'll find out in Collin's book which should come out, oh, about August of 08.

[CharmNewton]

”If Saddam does not disarm we will disarm him”

Was Niger Selling Uranium to Saddam? No

Did Saddam have any weapons to “Disarm” No

This column refers to a BBC online article that provides details concerning 1.77 tons of enriched uranium and other radioactive materials removed from Iraq after the invasion. I don't recall the American media (even FoxNews) picking up this story. This is the link to the BBC story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3872201.stm

The article that follows is by Jack Cashill and is published by WorldNetDaily. the link to the article is below.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54590

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Joseph Wilson's original sin

Posted: March 8, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Anyone who has followed the Scooter Libby trial closely knows that Patrick Fitzgerald tried the wrong man. Among other things, Wilson has lied conspicuously about who sent him to Niger, who did not send him, what he found, what he did not find, and how he reported his findings.

Wilson did all of this during wartime in an effort to undermine the commander in chief. If there is not a law about this sort of mischief, there should be.

For all the reporting on the Wilson affair, however, the media have been preposterously silent about two critical and related understandings: the first is why Joseph Wilson originally insisted we not go into Iraq; and the second is why the Bush administration chose not to "find" what Wilson assured us we would find.

Both of these stories have been hiding in plain sight.

At the suggestion of his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame, Wilson made his critical trip to the African hellhole of Niger in February 2002. He had been there before. In the preface to the paperback version of his comically titled book, "The Politics of Truth," Wilson claims he went to Niger in 1999 "at the request of the CIA to look into other uranium-related matters."

The Joseph Wilson that mainstream America knows is a man of conscience who began to oppose the impending war with Iraq because his trip to Niger had proved to him the emptiness of Saddam's WMD boasts. This is the storyline that the major media continue to run with. Unfortunately, however, it is simply and demonstrably not true.

Conveniently overlooked by the media is an op-ed piece that unravels this lie in a stroke. Wilson wrote it for the San Jose Mercury News on Oct. 13, 2002. Although ant-war in its thrust, its message runs fully counter to the one that would make Wilson famous.

In it, Wilson argues that threatening to oust Saddam "will ensure that Saddam will use every weapon in his arsenal to defend himself." By every weapon, of course, he means the soon-to-be mocked WMDs. "As the just-released CIA report suggests," Wilson continues, "when cornered, Saddam is very likely to fight dirty."

Two weeks before the op-ed, in fact, the CIA had published a National Intelligence Estimate titled "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." Wilson's trip eight months earlier had obviously failed to persuade him or Plame that Iraq was not planning to fight dirty.

"Iraq [has been] vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake," reads the CIA report. "Acquiring either would shorten the time to produce nuclear weapons." Plame was a WMD specialist, by the way.

In his Mercury News op-ed, Wilson proceeds to make an elaborate and unconvincing argument that Saddam will desist from using his WMDs only if he is assured of keeping his job.

"One of the strongest arguments for a militarily supported inspection plan," continues Wilson, "is that it doesn't threaten Saddam with extinction, a threat that could push him to fight back with the very weapons we're seeking to destroy."

Unlike the U.S. Senate under Clinton, which had voted unanimously to make "regime change" official U.S, policy, Wilson wants Saddam to remain in power.

To understand why Wilson was working overtime to keep Saddam on the job is to understand that Saddam did indeed have something to hide. Although the evidence strongly suggests that Saddam was able to move most of his WMDs out of country with Russian help, he did not move them all.

A few weeks back I received an e-mail from a scientist affiliated with a major university's nuclear program. In the e-mail, he casually referred to the "1.77 tons of enriched uranium" the U.S. found in Iraq.

More than a little skeptical, I e-mailed the scientist back, "Tell me how we know about the 1.77 tons." He referred me to a fascinating article from BBC News online dated July 7, 2004.

Titled "U.S. reveals Iraq nuclear operation," the article details how 20 experts from the U.S. Energy Department's secret laboratories packaged and removed 1.77 tons of enriched uranium and then flew the material out of Iraq aboard a military plane.

The article quotes a smiling Spencer Abraham, secretary of energy, saying, "This operation was a major achievement." And just as suddenly as the story appeared, it disappeared. Not a word was heard of it from the major networks. The only American media to follow up on it was WorldNetDaily.

This is exactly the kind of story that the major media do not want to disseminate. They much prefer the Wilson storyline, however absurd on the face of it, that Bush lied us into war with manufactured stories of WMDs that never existed.

The question remains, though, why did the administration cooperate in spiking the story? "My feeling is that Abraham didn't get the memo," writes my scientist contact. "He opened his mouth and then everybody scrambled to have him never do it again."

The scientist speculates that Abraham may not have understood what the American forces had discovered. "He made enriched-u look like dirty bomb material, and that's that," adds the scientist. "But that isn't that."

"Enriched uranium = nuclear weapons," the scientist continues. He argues that the administration prefers that the American people remain ignorant on the subject, possibly to avoid panic.

"'Enriched uranium' means nothing to them. But it's everything. A machinist, a physicist and plastic explosive are all you need to make a Hiroshima-sized bang."

There is a second reason for discretion, namely that this material was not manufactured by Saddam. "I think that the French gave Saddam the enriched-u," observes the scientist, "and once Saddam decided to quit fighting Iran and start supporting Abu Nidal in earnest, we decided 'enough of that.'"

"Knowing the French," he adds, "they'd demand their hooch back after starting all the trouble with it."

The French connection almost assuredly got Joseph Wilson involved in this story in the first place. In 2002, he worked as an international consultant and had a long and deep involvement with French interests, mining interests in particular. Plame herself boasted of her husband's numerous "French contacts."

To be sure, the French government and hundreds of its key industries wanted to keep Saddam in power. Saddam had long been among the very best customers of its defense industry.

Along with the Russians, the French were also the primary beneficiaries of the shamefully corrupt United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

Even if Wilson had no involvement with the ill-concealed scandal, he had to know how Saddam's continued reign benefited his clients and potential clients. Why else would a Washington-based consultant write an op-ed for a San Jose newspaper?

One of the major media's grubby little secrets is that many of their op-eds are written for hire by individuals whose primary goal is to advance their client's interests. Given Wilson's humble stature in October 2002, San Jose was likely the best placement he could get. That would change. Within a year, the newly famous Wilson would be writing op-eds for the New York Times.

Indeed, Wilson's public relations work on behalf of his clients and allies deserves its own Harvard case study. Consider what is known beyond doubt:

Wilson finessed at least two all-expense paid trips to Niger from the CIA.

He used his newfound authority as a weapons inspector to argue publicly against a war that would harm his clients' interests.

Initially, he waged the argument that Saddam had to remain in power lest he use his arsenal of WMDs against American troops.

When the forged documents were exposed, he insinuated to at least three different publications that he was the first one to debunk the forgeries.

He used his CIA operative wife to enhance his credibility with the first of those reporters, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, despite the risk to her career in so doing.

Once his wife was exposed, and his own fame heightened as a consequence, he used his visibility to argue that the French ought to be cut in on Iraq reconstruction contracts.

He used his celebrity to repeat the canard that there never had been any WMDs and that the Bush administration lied about them to seduce the nation into war. This, too, had the effect of making his "French contacts" seems less immoral and more worthy of the spoils and his Democratic clients more likely to regain the Congress and the presidency.
As to the 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, my scientist contact believes it would have been shipped to Oak Ridge or Lawrence Livermore to run the forensics on it.

Once completed, we would know where it came from. And for whatever reason, our government has decided that taking a hit on WMDs is more constructive than sharing that information.