Category: The Dish

Good for him.

A reader writes:

I think Andy McCarthy’s interpretation of the ‘Where’s Rove?’ comment is a bit disingenuous. The defense opened up their arguments saying that Libby was sacrificed to protect Rove and Cheney, but they then proceeded to provide none of this evidence. Rove wasn’t called to testify, Cheney was nowhere to be found, and Libby didn’t take the stand for his own defense. That juror comment is more an indictment of a poor job from the defense than it was of unnecessary charges being filed.

Andy believes that the investigators "should have quickly realized that the facts here did not warrant a prosecution" under IIPA. No crime no foul, no Libby indictment. I believed that investigators saw smoke, and decided to dig and find the fire. Problem is that Libby lied and constructed a bogus story to cover his (and Cheney’s) butt. This interference prevented the investigators in uncovering the facts that could have led to charges under the espionage and identity protection acts. Libby lied to hide the truth. If Libby did not lie, then Rove and Cheney may be on trial right now for the damage they have done. If that was what Libby intended to do, he seems to have succeeded.

But what if Libby now decides to tell the truth? I mean: about the real reason he lied and risked jail to protect his boss?

A reader writes:

Thank you, Andrew, for that post. I will testify to you about the bravest man I ever knew.

My brother, eleven years older than me, my godfather, was a semi-nelly queen from rural southeast Texas, where we grew up. Talk about steel. There, especially then, you take your life in your hands if you’re queer and honest about it. Far more likely you grow up closeted and hating yourself. Well, my brother didn’t hate himself, but plenty of people down there did. And somehow, in the face of hate, he displayed understanding and equanimity. How he managed understanding was sometimes beyond me. Like your friends, Andrew, my brother had more strength and courage and grace than Hannity and Coulter put together. He died of AIDS, Christmas 1994. He lived long enough to have several fatal diseases – Kaposi’s, pneumocystis carinii, etc. – by the time he died. He lived his illness without bitterness, complaint, or regret. He planned his death, from the hospice to the urn, so as not to be a burden to our parents or to his brothers or friends. All the while offering comfort to his friends who were sicker, cooking meals, driving to appointments, enforcing medical regimes.

I’ve never seen someone so kind to the nurses and doctors attending him.
"I’m sorry, I look horrible," he said to the doctor at his last appointment.
"Do you feel like you’re dying?" his doctor asked.
"Yes. Is that okay?"

He faced eternity with peace and wisdom and a great good humor that I continue to find simply stunning. I am not prone to experiencing profound revelations. But his death was just that to me. And this, of course, says nothing about who my brother was apart from his disease.

My brother was not a faggot. He was a man.

(Photo: a sanitation workers’ strike in Tennessee, February 11, 1968. More info here.)

My reponse to Ann Coulter’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s FNC show last night can be read here.

On another explosive front, a lawyer writes:

I have spent much of today watching the webcast of the Judiciary Committee hearings with the dismissed US Attorneys – from California, New Mexico and Arkansas. The testimony has been the most riveting I can remember in many years, and what’s coming out is shocking. Remember, all of these US attorneys are highly qualified, smart, professional REPUBLICANS. People who expect to have a career in elective politics, usually picked, among other things, for their long-term potential as political candidates. No problem with that after all. And that’s what makes their testimony so compelling. Because they’re portraying Alberto Gonzales and his deputy Paul J McNulty like figures out of a play by Bertolt Brecht. 

The key is crude political direction of the prosecutorial service – go get Democrats, and do it in a way to get maximum electoral benefit; lay off the corrupt Republicans; use your prosecutorial authority for voter suppression projects targeting minorities. This is exactly the sort of conduct that the system is constructed to make impossible. For three years now I’ve heard a steady flow of whispers from DOJ professionals that this sort of stuff is going on, and even I (certainly no friend of the Administration) kept thinking:  no, it can’t be. But it is. This will call for very stringent action: the appointment of a special prosecutor, an independent investigation, and certainly the dismissal of Gonzales and McNulty. Ultimately perhaps their prosecution.

Bangkok, Thailand, 7 am.

"If information comes to light or new information comes to us that would warrant us taking some action, we’ll, of course, do that," – Patrick Fitzgerald, a man who doesn’t have a record of giving up when he smells corruption.

Andy McCarthy makes it here. If I still believed that Cheney sincerely believed that there were dangerous WMDs in Iraq before the war, I might agree. But I have enough doubt on that score now to hope this matter is pursued further. Perhaps the best way is by Congressional hearings on the use or abuse of pre-war WMD intelligence. Cheney should testify. He can’t act like a monarch any more under these circumstances. And a sit-down with a poodle like Hume or Wallace won’t wash. I was going to suggest an interview with Russert, but that might get a little ridiculous.

The latest from Peter in TNR.

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent? Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something very serious to hide? He will now have to answer many questions – either before the press or before the Senate. Mark Daniels asks the right questions:

Libby was, by all accounts, Dick Cheney’s alter ego. There will thus be many questions asked about any association the Vice President may have had with Libby’s crimes. A verion of Howard Baker’s questions during the Watergate hearings, posed about Nixon, will be foremost among them:

• What did the Vice President know?
• When did he know it?

The Bush Administration, trying to assert its leadership on Iraq, the war on terrorists, and a number of domestic initiatives, may decide that they can’t afford a drawn-out defense of the Vice President. Cheney, a loyal soldier, may also be able to use his new health issues as a convenient (and legitimate) reason for stepping down. His resignation would give Bush Administration critics one less thing to complain about. And the right replacement nominated by Mr. Bush could earn him points and goodwill.

An alternative strategy would be to pardon Libby soon, as National Review is apparently proposing (their server appears to have been drudged). I can see why they feel this way. But purely from a political standpoint, such a pardon would surely ignite a massive protest, turn this story into a much bigger one, and make many more Americans curious about why their own vice-president was more interested in tackling a domestic critic in the summer of 2003 than fighting the Iraq insurgency. The risk in not pardoning Libby, of course, is that he may begin to talk. Uh-oh. The aspens could be turning. And their roots are all connected.