Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Now About That Village Idiot

Libby was convicted of lying to a Grand Jury:

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.


That there was no underlying crime to go along with this must diminish the thrill of a late Fitzmas somewhat.

I still want to know why the buffoon Wilson was sent on such an important mission.

I've given up on wanting to know why the press can't even get the story right.

UPDATE: Wow. The Washington Post editorializes that there was no "there" there and no underlying crime:

Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.


The history of how a movement embraced the Village Idiot because he hated the same people the movement hated will be fascinating. Or would be if the historians weren't part of that same movement.