Time asks the question;
Some observers wondered last week why a bright lawyer like Libby bothered with a cover story at all. The indictment offers scant evidence that Libby knew Plame was a covert officer, a key test in the 1982 law barring such disclosures. By that logic, Libby could have told the truth about everything he did and still avoided criminal exposure.
Time notes that Fitzgerald has not revealed everything he knows, and therefore there could be more to this than we can see. Nevertheless, as St. Clair/Cockburn note, Libby could simply have trotted out the reliable ol’ “I have no clear recollection of that, sir”, so beloved of crafty politicos under investigation. St. Clair/Cockburn conclude;
The people in charge of the nation’s destinies these last five years are very, very stupid. Only really stupid people could have thought that outing Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA employee was a good way of undercutting her husband, Joe Wilson. Cheney is stupid. Rove is stupid. Bush is stupid. Libby, about whom we now have a heap of useful material, is very, very stupid.
Don’t sugarcoat it like that guys. Give it to us straight. The LRC bloggers, particularly William L. Anderson, take a mostly negative view, comparing the investigation and indictment to the Salem-like Martha Stewart investigation. I’m with them. Gary North agrees, claiming Scooter is “ruined”, but on that point, I diverge. Assuming Scooter is convicted and goes to the land of slamming doors for a couple of years, when he gets out, he’ll get his own talk show. Perhaps a guest spot on Crossfire, or a seat on the McLaughlin Group. The real criminals, the ones in charge of the “justice” system, are never prosecuted, and as St. Clair/Cockburn say, Scooter will probably get a big, fat pardon anyway.