As Editor
& Publisher reported, a spokesman for the jury
that convicted Libby told reporters immediately afterward
that many felt sympathy for him and believed he was only
the "fall guy."
Denis Collins said that "a number of times"
they asked themselves, "what is HE doing here? 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."
He said they believed that Vice President Cheney did
"task him to talk to reporters."
And While Libby faces years in prison, Cheney may
step down and retire at any moment, no doubt going
on to live out his days profiting from his Halliburton
war fund and shooting old men in the face for fun.
At Libby's trial, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
has shown that Libby lied about leaking undercover CIA
officer Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 because Cheney's
office wanted to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador
Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was a strong public critic of
the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
Wilson had traveled to Niger in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored
mission to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein's
regime had attempted to procure weapons-grade uranium
from the African nation. Wilson reported to the CIA that
from what he could learn the allegations were almost certainly
untrue. In a July 6, 2003, op-ed in The New York Times,
Wilson charged that the Bush administration had "twisted"
intelligence information when it cited the alleged Niger-Iraq
connection in the president's State of Union address earlier
that year.
As one part of an effort to counter Wilson's allegations
and to discredit him, Libby and other Bush administration
officials told reporters that Wilson's wife selected him
to go on the CIA mission, suggesting nepotism.
Libby's trial has also brought Cheney's role to center
stage. According to evidence and testimony, Cheney selectively
leaked and declassified intelligence information to bolster
the administration's case for war and later to defend
against charges that he had misrepresented prewar intelligence.
Even former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob
Graham has stated:
"It's hard to believe that the chief of staff to
the vice president was acting as a rogue agent. What we
have learned from the trial validates the suspicion that
Libby was not just operating as a lone ranger. He was
carrying out what the vice president wanted him to do,
which was to besmirch Joe Wilson. I think Libby has been
a conspirator in one of the most reprehensible and damaging
breaches of American security in modern history."
However this will all seemingly go down the memory hole
with Libby's conviction and Cheney will face no recrimination.
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And what of Bush? While Libby takes the fall over the
Wilson/Plame affair, will anyone remember that at the
very core of it was the speech that Bush gave to the nation
in 2003 whereupon he announced that Iraq
had sought to buy uranium from Niger, a claim the
CIA had informed the administration was based on falsified
documents ten months before it was included in the speech.
This is just one of the many instances where Bush has
committed an impeachable offense by knowingly lying to
the American people.
Perhaps more remarkable is the fact that despite the
CIA's reservations over the central claim that Saddam
was allegedly attempting to buy yellowcake from Africa
for his nuclear weapons programme, and the White House
having formally backed away from the report, the British
Government still clings to its original position on this
dossier.
The intelligence was referred to by Lord Butler in his
2004 review of the use of intelligence in the approach
to the war, as he maintained that despite it being well
established by then that incriminating documents were
crude fakes, the intelligence was still credible!
As the London
Independent has today reported: