Libby Found Guilty - So What?

Scooter Libby was found guilty the other day of perjury in the Valerie Plame case that has been a liberal rallying cry (one of many) against the Bush administration. For some reason he had told FBI investigators that he didn't disclose her name to, I think, Robert Novak during an interview, when he actually had. This was after her name was already public, and many years after she had been a spy for the CIA. But because he neglected to tell this to the investigators, a jury concluded he hadn't forgotten it but actually had lied to them. So he's guilty of perjury. Not guilty of disclosing a spy's name and blowing her cover, mind you, which was the point of the investigation. Guilty of lying about it to investigators.

I can't help but see this whole farcical trial as an excuse for the lead investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald, to look he was actually accomplishing something in his investigation. I mean, how much of a threat, even supposing it is true, is Scooter Libby to the country? How big a problem was this lie? Was it material to even that case?

I read yesterday that some jurors polled stated that they believed Libby was the "fall guy" for the administration. That news is troubling for a few different reasons. First, it indicates that the jurors are left-leaning Bush-haters that may just be "out to get" the administration. These are people who would not have approached the trial with an open mind but just were looking for someone to hang. Second, it indicates that the jurors also do not know, or more likely do not care, that the real "leaker" of Plame's identity to the media has already been proven, almost a year ago, to be Richard Armitage, a leftie State Department employee who everyone knows is anti-Bush. So again, it was proven that the Bush administration had nothing to do with leaking her name, ergo there is no "fall guy." And we're back to BDS ("Bush Derangement Syndrome") to explain the jury's actions in convicting Libby.

Even if the disclosure of Plame's identity were a crime, and this is really questionable to begin with for a whole variety of reasons, why is Patrick Fitzgerald not spending his time putting Armitage on trial instead of Libby? If it was wrong, it was wrong. All the time the Left believed Karl Rove was the leaker, you couldn't flip through the news channels without hearing some leftie scream about the evil Bush administration's cover-up and all the harm supposedly done to Plame and her idiot husband, Joe Wilson. The right argued that no matter who it was, it didn't amount to a crime. As soon as the leaker was discovered to be Armitage, the left quieted down (without apologizing even once) and the right maintained its consistent position that it hadn't been a crime to begin with. If the right had been the left, we would have seized the moment and crucified Armitage. But the left is inherently dishonest and the right is not. This is just further proof of that.