Scooter and the Jury

Scooter Libby’s case has gone to the jury. There is a good probability he will be convicted of perjury and maybe a lesser chance of an obstruction conviction. But regardless of whether he is convicted on any counts, it is not likely Scooter will do jail time, because a Presidential pardon can prevent that and may have already been negotiated in a deal that kept Dick Cheney from having to take the stand.

For the public, this trial confirmed some facts people have already figured out about the Bush administration. The administration wanted to invade Iraq and was willing to distort and fabricate supposed evidence to justify invasion. When Joe Wilson shot down the false story about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa, the goal became to punish Wilson and deter any other critics. Dick Cheney made it his personal mission, because an implication had been made that Wilson was sent by Cheney’s office [possibly specifically to hide the fact that Wilson’s wife had recommended him for the job and she was a clandestine CIA agent working on nuclear issues]. In pursuing the destruction mission, Cheney facilitated the outing of a CIA agent, secretly declassified selective information in order to authorize what would have been a criminal act and established an administration campaign to lie to the American people, the media, the FBI and the Grand Jury about the campaign.

In his recent press conference, Bush asserted that the presence of Iranian weapons in Iraq is the responsibility of the President of Iran, regardless of whether he in fact knew about the program. So will Bush accept responsibility for the dangerously ruthless campaign to punish Wilson? At the press conference he avoided the question, supposedly because the matter was in trial. I suspect that his answer will eventually come in the form of a Presidential pardon.