Blood Lust

What do G. Gordon Liddy and I Lewis Libby have in common? Other than the obvious appelative similarity, they both have offered themselves (or been offered) as sacrificial lambs on the blood-soaked sands of the leotine media arena. It is an obvious but strange truth that reporters, once sensing political weakness, are not satisfied until there is a partisan jugular ripped open. (They then invariably go to sleep under a banyan tree while the other political impalas prance off into the veldt.) In this case, Scooter Libby turns out to be the unfortunate victim. But, like the weirdness associated with the Judith Miller affair, there are unanswered questions as to why Libby is the one who ended up being mauled. Scooter is not dumb … and he is an accomplished lawyer. So why did he make such obvious mistakes is dealing with the Special Counsel, Fitzgerald?

He gave evidence to the Grand Jury that was directly contraverted by documents he had also given them. He indicated that reporters and newscasters told him about Valarie Plame when they testified that they hadn’t. Why? The speculated answer was that V.P Chaney was his source and that Libby was protecting his boss. But he didn’t need to do this since Chaney had every right to discuss Plame and her husband, Joe “Yellow Cake” Wilson, with Scooter. I like to think that he did what he did to sate the media’s blood lust and, as a consequence, allow the Bush administration to get back to the business of fighting the war on terror. I also think that his punishnment will be mild if at all. And, if worse comes to worse, he will be pardoned when Bush leaves office in 2008.

But there is one other possible explanation – perhaps he was protecting instead Judith Miller as Cheney’s mole at the NY Times … or, even more likely, his paramour? Maybe, Miller would not rat Libby out until he assured her (on that personal phone call) that he would not reveal their secret(s)? (Note the similarities between Susan McDougal’s memory lapses when she stayed in the slammer to protect crooked-dick Clinton, her suspected lover.) After all, every other media luminary had blabbed on Libby to Fitzgerald with the ease of Joe Valachi spilling the beans on the Cosa Nostra. So much for reporters ”protecting” their news sources … particularly if these sources are from the right.