whole matter no more than footnote to sorry history of Bush-Cheney era?

[dajoki]

The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=32141

Posted 10/28/2005 @ 12:38am
Just the Start: Where Fitzgerald Looks Next


The big news with regard to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the apparent effort by the Bush-Cheney administration to punish former Ambassador Joe Wilson for revealing how the White House deceived the American people about the threat posed by Iraq is not the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Make no mistake, it is exceptionally significant that Cheney's closest aide and political confidante over the past two decades, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been charged with two counts of making false statements to federal agents, two counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for misleading and deceiving the grand jury about how he learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a Central Intelligence Agency operative. But if a Libby indictment is all that cones out of Fitzgerald's two-year-long investigation into a case that touches on fundamental questions of government accountability, abuse of power and the dubious "case" that was made for going to war in Iraq, then this whole matter will be no more that a footnote to the sorry history of the Bush-Cheney era.

What matters is that the Libby indictment is not all that will come of this investigation.

Fitzgerald met for close to an hour on Wednesday with U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The chief judge has overseen the inquiry into the leaking of the name of Wilson's wife to journalists in an effort to discredit the former ambassador. It is Hogan who has the power to extend the term of the grand jury, which was to expire Friday, or to give Fitzgerald a new grand jury with which to continue the investigation.

If, indeed, the inquiry will continue, as now appears likely, then we have reached the Churchillian moment when it can be said: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

[Mike03]

1. Hopefully much more to come

Big things have small beginnings.

[dajoki]

2. i hope tou are correct...

i'm beside myself right now.