Gaming Scooter's Trial

Last October I was wishing for indictments for my birthday. That week saw Scooter Libby leave the White House in a black limo. That image signified the beginning of the end for Cheney/Bush.

The indictment says Mr. Libby learned about Mrs. Wilson first from a senior State Department official, then from a CIA officer, and then from Mr. Cheney himself, who learned her identity from George Tenet, the director of central intelligence at the time. At one point, according to the indictment, Mr. Libby accosted Mr. Cheney's CIA briefer to complain that CIA officials were making critical comments to the press about Mr. Cheney's office, and mentioned Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife. This deeply improper harassment occurred a month before Mr. Novak's column outing Plame appeared. Given Plame's status a Mid-East expert this entire stunt served to degrade our already meager intelligence capabilities.

When called to account for his actions, Mr. Libby pointed his finger at a group of reporters, according to the indictment, shifting attention from himself. That prompted Mr. Fitzgerald to subpoena those journalists, and began a yearlong fight over the protection of confidential sources. Today, the jury pool has been established with 16 jurors who will listen to Scooter's "I forgot" defense. The Jury is 80% white in a town where 62% of the residents are minority. Seems the lawyers for the defense weren't able to find enough minority citizens who are sympathetic to the plight of the Bush Administration whose well-documented lies have yet to catch up with them. The jury pool also includes a former Washington Post reporter who previously worked for Bob Woodward and is a neighbor of Tim Russert, both of whom are to be witnesses in the case. Also not mentioned is that one juror is the fiancee of one of Libby's defense lawyers. Opening statements from Fitzgerald featured an accusation that Libby destroyed a memorandum documenting Cheney's influence in the outing of Plame.

Word was that Patrick Fitzgerald has long one-on-one conversations with both Cheney and Bush before interviewing everyone else. It is my sincere hope that Patrick Fitzgerald has put an airtight case against Cheney/Bush and is ready to pull the string on the entire raft of lies that have characterized this Administration since Bush’s father’s Supreme Court nominees installed him as Commander in Chief. Ridding this country of Cheney/Bush before 2008 would go a long ways to help Americans regain their heritage, rights and security.