Krauthammer's Complicity

The Plame case is too important to let Krauthammer whitewash it as just some prosecutor going bananas over a simple memory failure.

The picture that Krauthammer paints of Libby is of a powerful man deftly handling dozens of issues simultaneously, who has forgotten a minor detail on a minor issue. The minor issue is Ambassador Wilson's op-ed blasting the State of the Union claim that Iraq was close to going nuclear. The minor detail was when Libby learned that Wilson's wife was at the CIA. This is Krauthammer's first deception: "minor" does not describe either the issue or the detail.

Krauthammer's second deception is in painting Russert's testimony as the only detail of the case that actually pinned Libby as a liar. In so doing, he treats the case as a simple he-said-she-said disagreement. The jury looks awfully culpable if they sided with Russert over Libby when all they had to go on was their testimony.

But that blame-the-jury stance is itself deceptive... Libby didn't take the stand at his trial. "He-said-she-said" doesn't work if only one person is couragous enough to say anything!

But lets get back to that second deception before I blast the first.

Krauthammer is ignoring the testimony from Cheney's press aid, Cathie Martin. Martin testified that Libby and Cheney had discussed how to handle the mess over Wilson's op-ed at great length, and had talked about Wilson's wife and her possition at the CIA as being key towards painting Wilson as a bumbling idiot who only got to where he was through nepotism. If your boss is super worried about one man and how to discredit him, do you forget?

FUCK NO!

This now is getting to the Krauthammer's first deception. The downplaying of the importance of Wilson's (AMBASSADOR WILSON's) courageous disagreement with the executive office. In Cheney's world there could be no dissent or everything would unravel.

Krauthammer is ignoring everything that Fitzgerald's suppeneas revealed about the climate of the vice-president's office. Cheney was obssesed with connecting Sadam with Nukes. Anything that could derail that opinon was locked-on for destruction: character assasination (e.g. Paul O'Niel), "expert" disagreement (e.g. Steven Hadley) -- whatever it took.

We know now that Cheney was criminally wrong. Criminally. He was resonsible for the Plame leak. He gave the order. Libby lied to protect his boss from a criminal indictment. That is a crime. You go to jail for crimes. For Krauthammer to argue Libby disserves a pardon requires he ignore the majority of the facts unearthed in Fitzgerald's ivestigation.

And here is where Krauthammer's motives should be examined. I think he feels he needs to get Libby off the hook, or else his own complicity in decieving the country into an unjustified war might land him in jail... well, I doubt jail, but he will find himself fired.