“not with a bang, but a whimper”…

Posted on Monday 29 January 2007

“Live Blogging” the Libby Trial is historic. Marcy Wheeler’s posts on Firedoglake updated every 15 minutes kept me transfixed all day, in between adding logs to the fire, on this coldest of days in the mountains. After Cathie Martin finished, Ari Fleischer got up and told the truth – the truth that Libby told him that Wilson’s wife, “Valerie Plame” worked at the “C.I.A.” in “C.P.D.” a critical three days before he told the Grand Jury he learned about her. For me, this trial isn’t about Libby’s guilt. Like anyone else that’s followed this case, I’m afraid I just “know” he’s guilty at this point. This trial is about how things work behind the closed doors of the White House in this Administration. Not pretty. Cathie Martin made it clear how manipulative they really are, and Ari added a few logs to that fire himself. Reminds me of sleazy college politics in the days when Fraternities and Sororities ran campuses in the 50’s and 60’s. David Addington’s testimony didn’t do Libby any good, but it was disappointing that he wasn’t on the stand in another trial – his and Cheney’s for their Unitary Executive Delusion.

I don’t know how much of the details of this trial are going to effect public opinion, but it’s bound to trickle out that our men in suits are anything but the champions of Moral America. The unspoken fact here is that these “leaders” are only political. Everything is about spin and control. If there’s any integrity, any greatness, any strength of purpose anywhere, it’s so far, well disguised. I guess that prior to this trial, I had the naive notion that, at least behind closed doors, they had some unity, some cohesive plan of action. They’re just a bunch of little boys playing like grown-ups, and doing it badly at best.

Well, every day of the trial so far has been a knockout. And tomorrow, Judith Miller comes to the stage. Cross you fingers that there will come a reason to dig more deeply to her relationship with the Administration about the pre-war intelligence and her absolutely inflammatory articles in the New York Times. Somehow, I think it will be to her advantage to expose previous leaks. Fitzgerald is steadfast in trying the case he has, not the one we want him to try. But it does seem to me that previous leaks have a bearing on this case, and Libby has waived her priviledge. We’ll see [fingers crossed, salt over left shoulder, don’t step on cracks]. It could happen. So far, it’s sort of anticlimactic. Everything we’ve speculated about is true. No fireworks, just a steady confirmation.

And, by the way, “Did they out Plame to get at Wilson?” Yes.

Another development. The released documents about the Niger Forgeries in the Libby Trial are not so specifically redacted as the ones in the SSCI. So, another blogging guru who has been inactive came out of hiding – eriposte from the left coaster. In some ways, his post is the biggest news of all – clear evidence that the Bush Administration actively covered-up the shakiness of the Niger Yellow Cake Uranium claims. The operative word is “actively.” It’s worth reading his analysis…

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