Scooter Libby Found Guilty

Scooter Libby was just found guilty around 1 P.M. EST, March 6, 2007. He was found guilty on several charges of obstruction of justice.

This is an important development in the discussion over the White House Administration's treatment of critics of the war. Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame were punished after Wilson discredited the White House Administration's claim that Nigeria had sold yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. It is widely believed that Richard Bruce Cheney, Vice President of the United States, ended Valerie Plame's CIA career in retaliation for Wilson's report, which undermined one of the White House's several justifications for Iraq2. Valerie Plame is Joseph Wilson's wife.

More as this develops.

UPDATE: I've been poking around on Google Analytics, which is a program that lets me see who's visiting my website and what they look at while they're here. Most people looked at the stats on the page about the belief in God declining. The page that got the fewest hits was the one on the 1954 Lavon affair. The fact that the 1954 Lavon Affair page got the fewest hits has caused me to postpone publication of my post on the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which was another important event in Israeli history.

I think there's a chance that I haven't been direct enough in this blog. So I'm going to write about the broader implications of Scooter Libby's trial, and I'm going to write it without really giving any thought to the form of it.

The fact that Scooter Libby was found guilty is a good thing. It shows that the people who were on the jury want the President of the United States to be accountable for his actions. It shows that the people on the jury don't want the Vice President to be able to do whatever he wants. It shows that there is an interest in preventing the President from being too much like a King.

The President took the country to war. The Congress agreed that a war with Iraq was a good thing. That was in 2003, in the early part of the year. But Joseph Wilson thought that the White House's justification for the war, which was that Iraq had bought yellowcake uranium from Nigeria in preparation for building an atomic bomb, was bogus. (reference, which is a letter written by Joseph Wilson himself, and which is highly recommended) In response, Joseph Wilson's wife CIA career was ended by the office of the Vice President. The office of the Vice President used Robert Novak, or worked with Robert Novak, to publicize that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover agent in the CIA.

Now Scooter Libby has been found guilty of not telling the truth when he was asked to explain when he knew that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. That's called obstruction of justice. Libby was found guilty on four out of five charges of it.

But the jury member who spoke to the press said that during deliberations the jury had been asking why they weren't trying Karl Rove. Apparently they thought that Karl Rove was somehow responsible.

And everyone wants to know if Cheney had Plame thrown to the dogs, and then let Scooter Libby take the fall for it.

On one level, this trial is about whether or not Scooter Libby lied about knowing about Valerie Plame's CIA membership. On another level, this trial is about whether it is still allowed to question the President when the country is at war. Wilson had credible evidence that the White House Administration was lying, that the White House knew that Iraq had not bought uranium from Niger (by the way, if Niger did sell uranium to Iraq, why haven't we punished Niger for having sold it to them?). But when Wilson published his findings, his wife's CIA cover was blown, which could have been fatal. Robert Novak published Valerie Plame's identity in the Washington Post on July 14, 2003. Was Novak ordered to publish this by the White House Administration? Why would a journalist do the bidding of the government?

But on another level, this trial is about whether the President of the United States has a personal army to be used for whatever he wants. This trial is about whether the President is a King. Can the President send people to build bases in foreign countries without vetting it past the people? If people point out that the justifications for the war are bad, is the President allowed to silence those people? Is the President allowed to do whatever he wants, without Congressional oversight? Those are the other questions which this trial poses.