OK, So I Was Wrong About The Scooter Libby Trial

I thought the Scooter Libby trial wouldn't be worth following because Bush would certainly pardon Scooter if he was convicted so why waste any effort paying attention to it.

Man, was I wrong.

First of all, we get that remark made in opening statements by Scooter's attorney that Libby was sacrificed to save Karl Rove. This made me think that perhaps a pardon was not in Libby's future. And yesterday, we get this from the Washington Post:

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

OK, so that revelation wasn't exactly a bombshell, but it's certainly fun to hear it coming from a former BushCo insider -- I thought we'd have to wait years to hear about this type of stuff. And I really liked this part from the WaPo article: "With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. 'Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday,' she said. 'Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday.'" Plus, the whole Ari Fleischer immunity deal is pretty interesting. You can read more about all of this here.

But what has struck me most about this trial so far is how hyper-focused Cheney and the rest of the Bush Regime was in going after Ambassador Wilson. Sure, I knew it was a big issue for BushCo -- I've stated on this blog that if the Bush Regime dedicated a mere fraction of the time they spent going after political opponents to actually working to solve problems, then this country wouldn't be in the mess it is now -- but I am truly shocked by the extent of the administration's obsession with Ambassador Wilson. They obviously knew back then that Wilson was right, and history has, of course, proven that Wilson was correct.

Scooter's apparent defense to the perjury and obstruction charges is that he was so busy saving the country from terrorists that he simply forgot who said what and when it was said with regard to what he considered to be a very minor issue. It would be like Jack Bauer from "24" forgetting what kind of sandwich he was eating while he was torturing a suspect who knew the location of a suitcase nuke which was about to go off in downtown Los Angeles.

But the story that is coming out after a few days of trial is that this was a huge issue for Cheney and the rest of his administration, so it's going to be pretty hard for Scooter to convince a jury that he simply forgot a few minor points and wasn't actually lying to prosecutors, given that discrediting Wilson appeared to be a top priority for them at the time.

And with regard to Cheney, this is pretty interesting (although also not too surprising):

Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday. * * *

* * * Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.

In an e-mail response to Rockefeller's comments, Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: "The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee."

Let me see if I got this straight: Cheney pushed Sen. Roberts -- a Republican who was bending over backward to protect the Bush Regime and probably would have released a watered-down report anyway -- to stall the investigation. Kind of makes you think that Cheney and the rest of them have something to hide.