MUST-READ: Libby indictment likely to spark new debate about Iraq war

[highplainsdem]

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/13024823.htm


Posted on Fri, Oct. 28, 2005

Libby indictment likely to spark new debate about Iraq war

BY MICHAEL TACKETT

Chicago Tribune


WASHINGTON - It is not always what happens here that matters as much as when it happens.

A few years ago, the indictment of the little-known-beyond-the-Beltway chief of staff to the vice president (even one called by a memorable childlike nickname) could have been dismissed as a limited action by an individual rogue.

But the criminal charges against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, come at the worst possible time for the Bush administration, and the context is critical.

Libby's indictment represents for the Bush administration something even more serious than the felony charge that it is. It invites a reopening, through a public trial and renewed political debate, of the most important decision of Bush's presidency, the one to wage pre-emptive war in Iraq.


<snip>

This article is a great read, with observations about how Fitzgerald "isn't familiar with the folkways of the capital," including the "uneasy intersection among the media and the powerful in Washington, with a strange and mostly unwritten set of rules" that has let them try to dismiss what Libby did as gossip (exactly the word Woodward used for it last night on Larry King Live).

[highplainsdem]

1. Kick. This is the sort of article we're hoping to see.

[highplainsdem]

4. And Google News shows it being carried by 15 papers already,

all across the country.

[senseandsensibility]

2. Good article

Thanks for posting.

[goodhue]

3. Great article

I do hope debate will focus on why Libby lied

[BelgianMadCow]

5. and OUT come the Downing Street Memos

again, finally

:bounce:

and on to Kelly,
and back to Miller,
and on to the Plame threads!

[highplainsdem]

6. God, I hope the DSM finally get more attention.

[bslade]

9. Re: God, I hope the Downing Street Memos finally get more attention

Me too.

See AfterDowningStreet.org for lots of details about the Downing Street Memos

Ben in DC

[newyawker99]

10. Hi bslade!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[highplainsdem]

7. kick

[oxbow]

8. Is this a typo?

In an earlier time, the Bush camp may have simply tried to crush the integrity of the critic. Such tactics have long been in the Rove political toolkit, and the Clinton administration almost perfected the craft of killing the messenger.

This time, though, the message is about national security. And the messenger, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, is an especially tough critic to tarnish, given his impressive reputation and the fact that Bush himself recently complimented him.


I think they jumbled their administrations, given the context.