Decision ‘08

Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel

The New York Times editorial tomorrow will make Frank Rich proud - it will cover all the things the trial did not, as the Paper of Record tries to spin an obstruction of justice and perjury conviction into a sweeping indictment of the Iraq War, the Bush Administration, neocons, and First Dog Barney. No heed will be paid to the actual limited circumstances of the case, and the Times will gloss right by the lack of jurisdiction on Plame’s alleged ‘outing’ and will assert that it was proven anyway.

Today, here’s the NY Times:

There will be a great deal written and said in coming days about the frustrations of the Scooter Libby verdict — that it did not tell us whether someone deliberately blew Valerie Plame Wilson’s cover or erase serious concerns about the prosecutor’s abuse of the First Amendment. Let’s focus first on what the verdict does say.

One of the most senior officials in the White House, Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, was caught lying to the F.B.I. He appears to have been trying to cover up a smear campaign that was orchestrated by his boss against the first person to unmask one of the many untruths that President Bush used to justify invading Iraq. He was charged with those crimes, defended by the best lawyers he could get, tried in an open courtroom and convicted of serious felonies. Mr. Libby walked freely out of the court, had his say in public and will be allowed to appeal.

…The specter of a nuclear-armed Iraq was central to Mr. Bush’s case for rushing to war. So, the trial testimony showed, Mr. Cheney orchestrated an assault on Mr. Wilson’s credibility with the help of Mr. Libby and others. They whispered to journalists that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the C.I.A. and that nepotism was the reason he had been chosen for the trip.

That is what we know from the Libby trial, and it is some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war. What Mr. Wilson found, and subsequent investigations confirmed, was that there was one trip in 1999 — not “recently,” but four years before Mr. Bush’s statement — by an Iraqi official to Niger and that during that trip, uranium was never discussed.

It’s all there: the lazy assertion that things were proven merely because they were testified to by one party in a dispute, the broad generalizations, the sweeping indictment of the administration - and then a small admission:

What we still do not know is whether a government official used Ms. Wilson’s name despite knowing that she worked undercover. That is a serious offense, which could have put her and all those who had worked with her in danger.

Yes, that would be a serious offense. Too bad it was not the subject of this trial…