The Verdict is In.
The verdict is in on the Most Ridiculous Trial since Martha Stewart’s and the result is that Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts.
For those of you who actually care about this case, and I can’t imagine there are many of you, you can finnd video of various verdict-related matters at Hot Air. Of course, the leftists are throwing Fitzmas parties as we speak. heck, let them have their fun. It’s been a rough decade for them.
I admit I haven’t really been following the trial. I honestly don’t care if Libby misremembered something in one of his bazillion interviews with the special prosecutor. What does matter to me is what we already know: we don’t entirely know if Valerie Plame was covert when her name came up and the person who allegedly “leaked” her name was Richard Armitage, a staunch foe of the administration. As I understand it, these facts could not be part of the trail even though they were the very reason the trial existed. Fitzgerald was head-hunting, as a great many prosecutors. When they can’t get the scalp they really want, they’ll settle for any scalp they can get. Libby was that scalp.
My guess is that Libby will either get a new trial or that the case will be successfully appealed.
UPDATE: Welcome to readers of The Blog Report! Really, though, folks, go on and read something else. I’ve barely read anything about the trial except in the past couple days. The important questions to me have already been asked and answered. Beyond that, it’s all a juvenile political “gotcha” game and I just don’t care. We have important grown-up matters to which we need to attend. Go read about the Secular Islamic Summit, for example. That’s stuff that could change this country and the world.
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Category: Political Pontifications
To characterize Armitage as a staunch Administration foe ignores his membership in PNAC, the think tank that fostered this administration’s foreign policy and included many administration officials, among them Cheney, Libby, Bolten, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld & more. In this light, Armitage is not as much at odds with this administration as your comment would have us think.
I have many friends, both left and right, who have kept an interest in the trial because it shed light into the secretive prewar administration. A rare opportunity not to be missed by anyone of any stripe who takes their politics seriously.
Seriously?!! You honestly believe that people don’t care about this? And that it’s insignifigant? You are a traitor and an idiot.
News flash, righty – there’s a reckoning coming. Your side is losing. Dumbass.
Libby Verdict…
If they couldn’t frame a simple question, how would they be able to consider all of the evidence and testimony and make a well reasoned decision about a case that was merely a game of he said / she said? …
bone – That would be the same Richard Armitage who characterized iran as a legitimate democracy, who worked for a State Department that fought against the President at every turn? Yeah, some ally he is.
Browncoat – No, people don’t really care about this. Go ahead and find yourself a hundred Americans. Ask them if they know who Libby is and why he was on trial. See how many correct answers you get.
And, just so you know, I have only one “side”, and that’s America’s side. You find your enemies among other Americans. I find them in the people who are murdering Americans and planning to murder more Americans every day. it’s sad that you assume that I have any other “side” than that.
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Newsflash: The trial wasn’t about Plame being a covert agent. If it was, Cheney and rove would have been on trial (among others).
It was about Libby lying to cover-up for others. (He did).
Now if Plame’s employers name came out when Al Gore was Veep, then …
BTW, it’s been a rough decade on all Americans, not just the Left.
Well, Robert, that does bring up an interesting question, now doesn’t it? If Libby was covering up for someone, what was he covering up? You don’t have an underlying crime to support Fitzgerald’s investigation and while it might be satisfying to haul all sorts of folks to the witness stand under oath, but that’s not what we generally do around here. Y’know, the Constitution and all.
jimmie,
the fact that most americans care more about britney or anna nicole than this case does not mean it is unimportant.
Armitige wasn’t the defendent in this case. Libby, the ultimate Bush administration insider was. And a jury unanimously declared him guilty of 4 of five counts, after a week of deliberation.
If you know anything about Fitzgerald, he works methodically and deliberately.He knows how to get to the truth by pulling one layer of the onion at a time. At the outset of the trial, he claimed that he was unable to get to the bottom of the matter because so many contradictory claims had been made. I have no reason to disbelieve him. The jury has spoken loud and clear. Purgury and obstruction of justice have been proved. There are still many questions remaining. Will Fitzgerald act to prosecute the actual outing of a covert agent, along with an entire anti-wmd operation? Pass the popcorn.
1) VP was NOC in Counter Proliferation. This means her status was so secret, the CIA is not even allowed by law to ever acknowledge she works for them. So, no “we” don’t know her status cus they legally cant tell us without violating federal law. but..
2) The CIA is not generally in the habit of asking the Attourney General’s office to investigate the leak of a civillians’ employment status
jimmie brings up the Constitution to justify his claims.
Watch yourself jimmie, or the Republican Party might take away your membership.
“If Libby was covering up for someone, what was he covering up? You don’t have an underlying crime to support Fitzgerald’s investigation and while it might be satisfying to haul all sorts of folks to the witness stand under oath, but that’s not what we generally do around here. Y’know, the Constitution and all.”
Oooohh, that’s a good one!! Well, let’s see; can anybody say “Blowjob?” Slurp, slurp, slurp!! Remember? Now of course, that would be a wholly inappropriate illustration if you were among those excoriating Kenny Starr and loudly asserting what a disgusting political witch hunt and outrageous miscarriage of justice it was to impeach a U.S. President on the grounds of lying about some consensual knob-polishing. If not, oh please fill me in; I’m dying to know how these examples are utterly different.
“And, just so you know, I have only one “side”, and that’s America’s side. You find your enemies among other Americans. I find them in the people who are murdering Americans and planning to murder more Americans every day. it’s sad that you assume that I have any other “side” than that.”
Oh, yes; but of course!! the Republican faithful, all loving acolytes of Rodney King: “Can’t we all just get along?” Despite the relentless, deeply hurtful attacks on their character and integrity, the watchwords for Republicans are compromise and, above all, bipartisanship. All the Republicans want to do is cooperate with the opposition for the good of America, NEVER to take cheap political shots to solidify their iron grip on the levers of power. Yes, it is a scurilous outrage – an OUTRAGE – to slander Republicans by tarring them with the accusation that they treat Democrats and liberals as enemies. The “faggot”, “fragging,” “media whores” “poison Supreme Court justices,” “blow up the New York Times” stuff? Jokes! Jokes! Come on; the LIBERALS are supposed to be the ones with the sense of humor. And the accusations of “treason;” “appeasement;” “they hate the troops;” “they want the terrorists to win;” “they’re athiests who hate religion;” “they’re communists who want to destroy private property;” and all the rest? Why that’s not treating their oppenents as enemies; cause it’s TRUE! IT’S TRUE. That’s the big difference.
Tomorrow morning Libby’s conviction is front page news. It will be the lead topic of all news tonight. (Even on Fox, though they’ll be busy lying about it.) Those who barely follow the news will still get the message: “high level admin official is now convicted felon.”
You’ve convinced yourself this is not important, and that’s fine. But it wasn’t long ago that the people threw the GOP out of Congress, and one of the big reasons was ‘corruption.’ Libby’s conviction will add to the general feeling of “GOP = crooks.”
Regardless of whether this finally leads to Cheney, the damage to the administration and the GOP is huge.
You righties, turned into hysterical harpies when Bill Clinton was found guilty of perjury. But the fact that a jury found Libby guilty of the same crime is greeted with dismay? Perjury is perjury, whether a Democrat or a Republican commits it. Lying under oath is a criminal offense.
This is the most Ridiculous Trial since Martha Stewart’s? Had a Democrat been charged of lying under oath about an Administration cover-up in the outing of a CIA agent, you, people, would have marched on Washington with assault rifles !
Spare us the faux outrage.
Anyway, your beloved Libby won’t spend an hour in jail. He is free on bail pending appeal. His lawyers have already said that they will seek a new trial. If that fails, or if a new trial results in a conviction, the lawyers will drag on the appeal process until Bush is safely on his way out the door in January 2009, at which point he will pardon the Scooter. Meanwhile, Cheney is already warming up Libby’s seat in a cushy and highly paid job at Haliburton as a reward for his accepting to be the fall guy.
*sighs*
You guys really don’t have much int he way of reading comprehension, do you?
Post here all you want but it’s not going to make me care about this trial. Jump up and down and throw party poppers all you want, but the average person out there cases exactly zero about Lewis Libby. Like I said, if you rounded up a hundred Americans and asked them who Lewis Libby is or what, exactly, he did, you’d be lucky to get one correct answer.
Yes, this case will get a ton of headlines but it won’t matter one bit. There’s a grown-up world out there and the rest of us will be busy tending to serious matters. When you’re ready to join us, we’ll be out there.
Right on jimmie.
Americans are WAY more interested in Anna Smith and who Ms. Spears is sleeping with.
How do you think we became the most powerful nation on the planet?*
*This was before a ragtag bunch of underdogs kicked the ass of America’s fighting machine in the MidEast.
jimmie,
Share your adult opinion with us, Jimmie. Will Bush’s approval rating go up or down next week? Is his approval rating a “grown-up” concern here at the Sundries Shack?
Devil’s Advocate,
To be precise, the House impeached Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, but he was acquitted of the charges in the Senate.
So he was not “guilty” of either charge.
Libby, on the other hand, was charged with both crimes and convicted of both. That’s why Libby is facing prison, and Clinton finished his term and left office with a 65% approval rating.
There’s a grown-up world out there and the rest of us will be busy tending to serious matters. .
She was a CIA expert on WMD, with a special focus in the Iranian nuclear program. Can’t see how that’s important these days? Really? The rest of us must be reading newspapers that don’t require crayon participation.
Really. It’s pathetic to watch the idiotic contortions you people are going through to excuse an administration-wide smear on a guy by ripping on his wife who worked for the CIA and the subsequent cover up. Hell, even BUSH, once upon a time, thought it was so important he’d fire anyone in his administration found to leak such a thing. That no fewer than four people did (Ari Fleischer, Richard Armitrage, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby), well, WHOOPS, I guess the President really IS a liar.
OK, so you don’t want to pay attention to this. How about Walter Reed — the GOP’s loveletter to our wounded soliders? Or whatabout the series of suicide bombings today in Iraq? No, that’s depressing. I know, what about the politically-motivated purge of US Attorneys, orchestrated by the GOP?
I’m thinking you’ll bury your head on those too. Not important. It’s WAY more important to note something Hillary Clinton said on the campaign trail today.
Jimmie
In the end the trial does not matter much, you are right. This is about a President and his cabinet LYING about WMD’s intelligence in Iraq, to get us into an unnecessary war that we will pay for generations to come.
For this, the average American does not need to know who Libby is, or if he is guilty and of what. For this the veredict is already out (look at the polls) and the Bush Administration has been found guilty as charged.
History is going to have a field day with these bunch of liars.
Such hypocracy! You were all over Clinton when he was tried for exactly the smae thing, with less evidence.
How about a commuter bus full of people of all political stripes who live more than hour outside the city knowing exactly who Plame was, and knew what the Libby trial was about? We have 30-50 people on the bus for the ride home and it seems almost everyone had a comment. So, let’s say some were asleep and we had about 25 people talking about it. That would give us 50-67%. That’s a pretty good number for a population that doesn’t care.
Then again, Jimmie, given that you have a link to Dembski, I guess you can’t be convinced of anything you ‘believe’ no matter how much truth and fact intrude into your world.
I wonder if that would be more or less than the number who know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So I guess that means you don’t care about that, either? Well, at least you’re consistent.
I swear, you guys make me laugh really hard. The amount of stuff you’re pulling out of your nether regions is astounding. I won’t bother to rebut the factual errors in every post except to say that buy, when you leftists grab hold of a fable, you refuse to let it go. But…let me toss out a few things that you can, in your spare time, look up on your own.
1) The Iraq WMD intelligence did not belong solely to this administration. It also belonged to the last administration and a dozen other nations, as well as the UN.
2) Bush’s approval numbers mean exactly squat. He won the two contests that mattered, the last one with a record number of votes.
3) Bill Clinton was, in fact, found guilty of a crime. He was fined and lost his license to practice law because of it.
4) Valerie Plame was about as covert as I. She drove to work every day for years, using her own identity, to the CIA headquarters in Langley. She filed documents freely available to the public when she and her husband contributed to political campaigns, using as her employer a CIA shell company. She did this right out in the open where anyone with the Internet could find it.
5) Joseph Wilson’s findings in Africa actually strengthened the administration’s use of the claim by the British government, according to a Senate investigative committee. As well, the British stand by that claim to this very day and it has been supported strongly by their own public investigation.
More than that, folks, I can’t do for you. The truth is right there in front of you. You can look it all up or not.
That’s the last word in this thread on this subject. I’m closing it to comments because, quite honestly. I’m tired of repeating myself. If you want to continue, write your own posts on your own blogs and send trackbacks.