A lot of stuff went down yesterday. Learned anything?
The New York Times is a little angry at Patrick Fitzgerald. They have the nuts to ask why he went after the news media. Don't they know the answer to that... yet? Instead of denying and pointing fingers at others, the Times might take a harder look at itself.
That said, the editors make an excellent point in their lead editorial today: Libby's trial provided "some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war."
Already yesterday, the rightwing talk machine was making a start at blaming the Walter Reed mess on "government" and "the bureaucracy." No one asks whether a president should go to war without making sure necessary resources are in place. Already we know that the "boots on the ground" were expected to operate without adequate personal and vehicle armor. Undoubtedly there were other serious failures. But none is as devastating as the revelation about out-patient care for the wounded.
The fundamental responsibility rests with the president and his former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who stubbornly insisted on going to war without sufficient resources — and then sought to hide the costs of their disastrous mistakes from the American public. Is it any surprise that the war’s wounded have been hidden away in the shadows of moldy buildings by an administration that refused to let photographers take pictures of returning coffins? Or a White House that keeps claiming that victory in this failed and ever more costly war is always just a few more months away?
Tom Friedman makes a good point:
I haven’t kept count, but it seems to me that the number of times I’ve seen President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney give speeches about the Iraq war using smiling soldiers as their backdrops have been, well, countless. You’d think that an administration that has been so quick to exploit soldiers as props — whether it was to declare “Mission Accomplished” on an naval vessel or to silence critics by saying their words might endanger soldiers in battle — would have been equally quick to spare no expense in caring for those injured in the fight.
And this:
If you want to help and don’t want to wait for the White House bugle, here are some places to start: (1) Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes (www.saluteheroes.org), (2) the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (www.fallenheroesfund.org), (3) the Fisher Houses (www.fisherhouse.org) and (4) the Walter Reed Society (www.walterreedsociety.org). And one I know personally from my hometown, Minnesotans’ Military Appreciation Fund (www.thankmntroops.org).
For all its faults, I still like the New York Times. But the Washington Post really gets up my nose. It's turned into a cheesy rag that's managed to attract some terrific reporters. But only some.
The Post's Peter Baker, in an "analysis" of Libby's trial, writes that this has been a big accountability time for the White House. Gloom dominates.
"This has been a huge cloud over the White House," said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist close to the Bush team. "It caused a lot of intellectual, emotional and political energy to be expended when it should have been expended on the agenda. They're never going to fully recover from this. If you're looking at legacy, this episode gets prominently mentioned in every recap of the Bush administration, much like Iran-contra and Monica Lewinsky."
Then Baker makes a revealing assessment: "The Libby case never reached the level of those scandals, of course, but it became a proxy for many in Washington eager to re-litigate the origins of the Iraq war."
It's a measure of how the press has come to see its role in America, how the Post, for example, has largely avoided its responsibilities. Sex sells and distracts. High crimes and misdemeanors don't; they make voters angry and ready to challenge the establishment. That's uncomfortable for an establishment newspaper. So Baker can't seem to get unglued from Bill Clinton. It comes down to Monica vs. Scooter. Didn't I say "cheesy"? How about irresponsible and shallow?
It's worth quoting from the column's conclusion, though. There's the matter of a pardon, what Libby knows but hasn't told.
Libby may have to decide if he has anything else to tell authorities. John Q. Barrett, an Iran-contra prosecutor who teaches at St. John's University, recalled James W. McCord Jr. in Watergate and Alan Fiers in Iran-contra, who under threat of prison recanted past versions of events. If the jury was right that Libby lied, Barrett said, "he's now sitting wherever he is with cold sweat and troubled stomach and truth that he hasn't told. . . . Whatever the chips, if he held them and didn't lay them down, this may be the moment to decide."
Then there's the subject of a Congressional inquiry yesterday. How about Republican Senator hanging up on a US Attorney when the prosecutor wouldn't speed up an ongoing corruption investigation for political purposes?
David Iglesias, told a Senate panel Tuesday that Republican Pete Domenici, New Mexico's senior senator, called him at home 12 or 13 days before last November's election. Iglesias said that Domenici brought up a high-profile corruption case and asked if more indictments were coming before November. "I said I didn't think so," Iglesias told lawmakers investigating the firings. "To which he replied, 'I'm very sorry to hear that.' And then the line went dead."
