Reply #19: Interesting thread. [View All]

[H2O Man]

There are a number of valid points being made here. I'll add something that is important to keep in mind: Scooter has been seen as a leader among the republicans and conservative democrats. If we think of the administration as a sports team, Libby is the "quiet man" who always came through with the big plays, and didn't mind the media giving the credit to his best friend, Dick.

The neoconservatives are using the media now to play the silly "Scooter was a minor player" bit. But it conflicts with the Scooter that Team Libby wanted the jurors to hear about. He was no minor player, and we should confront every effort (including those on DU) to pretend that "little Scooter" was sacrificed like a lamb to satisfy angry democrats.

The guy co-authored a "defense" policy in 1992, with Paul Wolfowitz, that was a "classified blue-print intended to help 'set the nation's direction for the next century'," according to Bart Gellman from the Washington Post. Joe Biden called it a blueprint for a "Pax Americana." It was withdrawn and "forgotten" during the Clinton years, but became an official US policy in 2002.

Also, as Woodward pointed out in "Plan of Attack," Libby held a "trifecta of positions" that no single person had ever held in an administration before. "Scooter was a power center unto himself, and accordingly, a force multiplier for Cheney's agenda and views." (page 48)

It was Libby who went with VP Cheney (and, at times, Newt Gingrich) to the CIA headquarters to try to use force to multiply that Cheney agenda. In the July 25, 2005 edition of TIME, we read where a CIA analyst says, "I know the analyst who was subjected to withering questioning on the Iraq--al-Qaeda links by Libby with the Vice President sitting there." (page 29)

And it was Scooter Libby who, along with Cheney, was the moving force behind the operation to damage Joseph Wilson and destroy the group that Valerie Plame worked with in 2003. When others like Rove, Fleischer, and Armitage were not getting the required results, Libby undertook what others said were a "Libby black-op" and began leaking to Judith Miller.

When the investigation began, the OVP/WHIG/OSP believed they had covered it up completely. Wilson quotes a "senior administration official" telling a journalist that they had brought in "earthmovers" to cover their tracks. It was Rove, and his quote found its way into print a couple weeks before Patrick Fitzgerald took over the case.

The neoconservatives and their pals in Washington never thought that anyone, except possibly Karl Rove, was at risk. And Karl, though high-profile, can not be seriously compared to Libby in terms of power.

Washington was in shock to see Mr. Fitzgerald destroy their powerful team leader, Libby.