1 Boring Old Man

The commentators are all buzzing about the Libby Trial, and there’s plenty to buzz about. The advent of "live blogging" by the people at Firedoglake.com provides a ready-transcript to pore over and think about. The legal haranging part was a mammoth pain, requiring a legal correspondant to explain what in the hell they we’re talking about. The endless picking at details and points of law was brutally boring to the uninitiated [me]. If it’s so annoying, why even follow it? Why give up weeks of life sitting at a computer refreshing every 15-20 minutes to get the next post?

For me, there was a compelling reason. For the last year or so, I’ve joined the throngs of people who think that the Bush Administration took us off to fight a real war where real people have died in droves for spurious reasons. I remember 2002 when they first started talking about Iraq very clearly. I couldn’t figure out why they kept talking about Iraq. Al Qaeda had attacked us. Al Qaeda had a haven in Afghanistan, We invaded Afghanistan. All of that made sense. But then they started talking about Iraq. I couldn’t figure out why. There was talk of weapons of mass destruction, germ warfare, ties with Al Qaeda. Then we invaded, and none of those things materialized.

I was only vaguely aware of the C.I.A. Leak scandal when it started, but did know that a Federal Prosecutor had been appointed. It was a busy time for me. I was retiring from a busy medical practice and was consumed. I wasn’t really until the 2004 elections that all of this registered in a personal way. I just couldn’t believe Bush got re-elected. It threw me into a funk. When I read that Judith Miller had been put in jail, I started reading about her because it was similar to something that had happened to me. My sympathy for her rapidly disappeared as I learned more about her. Then I learned about the Conservative Think Tanks, the Niger Forgeries, the Downing Street Memos, all the stuff that we now know was part of the deceitful scam that our own government had pulled off to get us into their pre-planned war.

So, back to the Libby Trial. The reason I watched the Libby Trial was that Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation and this trial were windows into the workings of the Administration that provided unimpeachable evidence [not just word of mouth] that our government is as corrupt as it has seems. And it has provided more than enough confirmation that all of the lofty rhetoric and sarcasm is nothing but a front for criminals, Dick Cheney being the central culprit.

But as for the trial itself, there’s one simple fact that says it all to me. It’s actually not, oddly enough, the evidence. Libby gave a narrative that completely contradicts the evidence of lot of people. He say that there was a month long hiatus is which he didn’t remember that he’d been told that Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson’s wife, worked for the C.I.A. The prosecution presented a number of people who said they he talked to them about her in a variety of ways. His defense is that he was so busy that he forgot about her and forgot about talking to those people? If that’s the case, why not testify?

The answer, to me, is simple. If it were just his memory, he could say that on the stand [the first proposition on the left]. The only other way to be not guilty is for all of the witnesses to be lying – not a possibility. So if he testified he doesn’t remember [again], he would be admitting that all those things happened and he’d have to answer to why they happened. Why did he send a C.I.A. Agent looking into Valerie Plame and her husband’s trip? Why did he talk about her to Judy Miller? and Ari Fleischer? Why did he and his boss work up "talking points" about Joseph Wilson? There is no question about motive. Fitzgerald proved that in spades. Libby and Cheney were obsessed with Wilson’s article. The only reason not to testify is that he’s guilty.

• I still don’t remember. [unbelievable and not true]
• What they say didn’t happen. [unbelievable and not true]
• I didn’t remember then, but I remember now. [a train wreck!]