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Making Sense of the Libby Trial

The travesty proverbial as "Plamegate" finally floorboards to a lame this morning next to the confidence of I. Lewis Libby on 4 of 5 counts of obstruction, perjury, and mendacious. Just one problem: there's no definitive proof that Libby conducted any such schedule.

The total travel case hinged on two men remembering polar versions of the one and the same conversation-specifically, a discussion relating Libby and Matthew Cooper of Time which took lay in July 2003.This is what the research had been distilled to: two men's memoirs of a nearly 3-year old discussion with no physiological confirmation of any sort, and 5 crime counts floppy concluded the proceedings. Thin substance for such glorious gamble.

Underscoring the muddle and ambiguity about the casing were the responses of the jurors. As not long as yesterday, the jurors admitted frenzy on the maximum principal issues, such as the explanation of "reasonable state of mind." This morning, anterior to the verdict, the body asked for the justice to develop what two of the crime counts meant.

However, it gets worsened. The murk of the dealings belies the relatively univocal make-up of their inexplicit intent: to destabilize President Bush politically by illegitimating not just the Iraq war itself, but the motives losing it.

What had begun as a left-of-center molestation to discipline the "leakers" within the Bush administration who "outed" Valerie Plame took an offhand screw up honourable a few months ago erstwhile it became best-known that the untested basis for Novak's single file had not been Rove or Fleischer, but fairly Richard Armitage. Armitage, a Powell country instead than a Bush confidante, was not the reference the President's war critics were aiming at. And receive no mistake; the trial's aims were beyond question political. It was done the maneuverings of Senator Chuck Schumer that the action at law was handed ended to Patrick Fitzgerald in the most basic spot.

Fitzgerald's rapt was clear to any who heard his terminative publication today: Iraq, Bush, and Cheney were center stage, for that has been the prosecutor's focussing from the outset. His intent was not to retain the law, but to doings a politically-motivated blood feud.

The subject matter isn't completed for Libby, of course; he can still entreaty his case, and in all likelihood, will do so. More critical than the ask of Libby's fate, however, is the mindset internal the Beltway that deems it more central to tragedy pin-the-scandal-on-the-staffer to some extent than deal with the scholarly worries exhibit by an unraveling Iraq. This nightmare is a mark of ignominy for our policy-making class: janus-faced with severe issues at burrow and abroad, our leaders punted in kindness of placing bets on a score light.

Shame on them.