Libby Indictment No Cause for Leftist Party
Joseph McHugh
October 30, 2005
The Indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Friday prompted substantial cheering on the left, as though all of their arguments against the Iraq war have now been vindicated. See, they crow, it was a grand lie after all. It’s now clear, they say, this administration is populated by a bunch of sleazy henchmen, who were willing to do anything to get this country into an illegal and immoral war.
Yet the facts do not mesh with this view.
Let's be clear. Perjury is wrong, and perjurers should be punished. If Mr. Libby perjured himself, as the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald alleges, then he ought be fully punished by the law. If he broke the law in revealing the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame, then he is also very wrong. But this scandal falls far from being the sweeping saga many on the left are hoping for. Indeed, it is shaping up to be the type of inside the beltway drama that makes reporters salivate, and the average American yawn.
Let's examine the facts. Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA, apparently at the behest of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA operative, to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase Uranium there. While Wilson produced a report that many view as supporting the contention that Saddam had attempted this deal, and President Bush cited the information in a State of the Union address, Wilson went public in a New York Times piece claiming that the administration had fabricated the evidence of a Niger connection.
Many, especially in the administration, felt that it was Wilson,incidentally a former staffer for Al Gore, who was doing the misleading.
Thus, what we really have is a fight about the interpretation of intelligence. The backdrop of the whole affair is the fact that the CIA and the White House were involved in a political cat fight over intelligence. The CIA never felt the administration had it right with the pre-war information. Libby felt he needed to act to defend the administration from someone who was unfairly damaging the administration's case.
In other words, this was a spat between government agencies that got out of hand. We are not talking about a massive scandal, or even a cover up. The Bush administration cooperated fully with Fitzgerald.
The deeper questions, if there are any here, is why Washington feels the need to influence policy through leaks to the media. This administration has been at its best with the American people when it clearly, candidly and publicly made its case on the issues. But the entire case for the Iraq war, whether that conflict was justified or not, was hung on the simplistic hat of weapons of mass destruction. There were many other reasons that could have been persuasively argued. The administration may have overestimated the weapons of mass destruction, but they underestimated the intelligence of the American people.
Now that's a scandal.
Yet the facts do not mesh with this view.
Let's be clear. Perjury is wrong, and perjurers should be punished. If Mr. Libby perjured himself, as the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald alleges, then he ought be fully punished by the law. If he broke the law in revealing the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame, then he is also very wrong. But this scandal falls far from being the sweeping saga many on the left are hoping for. Indeed, it is shaping up to be the type of inside the beltway drama that makes reporters salivate, and the average American yawn.
Let's examine the facts. Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA, apparently at the behest of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA operative, to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase Uranium there. While Wilson produced a report that many view as supporting the contention that Saddam had attempted this deal, and President Bush cited the information in a State of the Union address, Wilson went public in a New York Times piece claiming that the administration had fabricated the evidence of a Niger connection.
Many, especially in the administration, felt that it was Wilson,incidentally a former staffer for Al Gore, who was doing the misleading.
Thus, what we really have is a fight about the interpretation of intelligence. The backdrop of the whole affair is the fact that the CIA and the White House were involved in a political cat fight over intelligence. The CIA never felt the administration had it right with the pre-war information. Libby felt he needed to act to defend the administration from someone who was unfairly damaging the administration's case.
In other words, this was a spat between government agencies that got out of hand. We are not talking about a massive scandal, or even a cover up. The Bush administration cooperated fully with Fitzgerald.
The deeper questions, if there are any here, is why Washington feels the need to influence policy through leaks to the media. This administration has been at its best with the American people when it clearly, candidly and publicly made its case on the issues. But the entire case for the Iraq war, whether that conflict was justified or not, was hung on the simplistic hat of weapons of mass destruction. There were many other reasons that could have been persuasively argued. The administration may have overestimated the weapons of mass destruction, but they underestimated the intelligence of the American people.
Now that's a scandal.
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