The Libby Travesty
Mr. Bush owes the former aide a pardon, and an apology.
Opinion Journal
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. ...
I finally got home networking figured out (Yes I'm embarrassed that it took so long) and I'm going to be spending a major chunk of the day reconfiguring my blogging setup. That being the case, I'm pretty much going to just settle for another link roundup where the Libby thing is concerned.
