In the Godfather Part II, Willie Cicci is testifying before the Senate Committee on Racketeering. He's asked if the Corleone Family always had buffers between the senior officers and the "button" men. Willie says, "Oh yeah a buffer. The Family had a lot of buffers". Well so, it would appear, does Dick Cheney and one of them was found guilty yesterday of lying to a grand jury.
As Martha Stewart and Bill Clinton will gladly tell you, playing it cagey with the feds can be a dicey proposition. The underlying cause may or may not matter in the long run but if you play fast and loose with the truth, you could find yourself as a "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law and Order.
The American public has long ago lost interest in this trial. At the beginning, when it looked like Cheney or Rove might make it to the stocks, everyone paid attention. Lewis "Scooter" Libby however is a small fish. Aside from a few political geeks and policy wonks, no one had even heard of the guy. Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor, abandoned all hope of any serious press coverage when the trial got scheduled during the new season of American Idol.
There are two things that everyone knows about this case:
1) Scooter Libby is taking the rap for his former boss, Dick Cheney.
2) OK. maybe one thing.
Once again Dick Cheney escapes the clutches of the Federal government. Back in the bad old days of Vietnam, Cheney was too busy with "other priorities" to serve his country in the military. Presumably one of those priorities was not getting shot in a rice paddy some 10,000 miles from dear old Wyoming. Now, once again, someone else will stand in the spot that Cheney should occupy. Once again the Vice President has been moved to a secure location. No one in America wants to think of their vice president as a coward but the evidence is overwhelming. When confronted with the fact that he owes his election to the gay-bashing Christians who would condemn his daughter Mary as a sinner, he attacks the interviewer. This guy is a piece of work!Bring back Spiro Agnew.
The facts in the Libby case are as follows: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz and Rove wanted war with Iraq and they were ready to steamroll anyone who tried to confuse the issue with facts. When Joseph Wilson returned from his fact-finding trip to Africa to report that the Hussein/uranium story was crap, the Cheney team wanted him discredited and, most of all, punished. They intentionally leaked Wilson's wife's CIA position to Robert Novak (I guess Ann Coulter was busy at the American Bigot Awards). When asked if he was involved in the leak, Libby lied to the feds. That's the story. All of the rest of the "Who knew What? When? and Who said What to Whom" is all smoke and mirrors.
You have to love my friends at the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page. They were headed for the lynching tree when Bill Clinton lied about getting a BJ from ML at the WH but they are offended beyond words that Mr. Libby should be convicted of the exact same offense. The difference is that, when Bill lied to a grand jury, he wasn't taking one for the team. (Why does that sound suggestive?).
Now that Cheney has wriggled off the hook, no one will care if, as a parting shot in 2008, George W. pardons Scooter Libby. He's no more responsible for the crime than Dick Cheney's shotgun was during the hunting accident last year. Like OJ, we can only shake our heads and hope that there is justice down the road. Maybe Cheney will take sick and be rushed to Walter Reed for treatment. He could be ignored, maltreated and forgotten just like the real soldier he never was. Now that would be justice.
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