Eugene Robinson: In the Wheelbarrow With Libby

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801503.html

In the Wheelbarrow With Libby

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 9, 2007; Page A21

The White House would like to strip the guilty verdicts against Lewis "Scooter" Libby of any larger meaning. The White House also would like to change the subject.

"I think there has been an attempt to try to use this as a great big wheelbarrow in which to dump a whole series of unrelated issues and say, 'Aha,' " press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday. "And it is what it is; it's a case involving Scooter Libby and his recollections, and we're just not going to comment further on it."

All right, then, dump everything out of the wheelbarrow except one rather weighty question: Did George W. Bush and his Cabinet lead the nation into war on false pretenses? Specifically, did Bush and the others know full well -- or, at a bare minimum, should they have known -- that the rhetoric they used to convince Americans of imminent peril from Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction was based on sketchy, disputed and even fraudulent evidence?

That historical question was the context for Libby's trial. Maybe it's unfair that Libby faces possible prison time as the "fall guy" for others, as one juror called him -- although I would ask those who are calling for a presidential pardon to remind us how they stood on impeaching Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton's lies had to do with sex. Libby's were about the selling of a war.

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